Comparative Study of Security in IEEE 802.11-2007 and IEEE 802.15.4-2006 for Patient Monitoring Environments

Extensive security is required for wireless networking in health care due to regulations for patient privacy and the necessary availability of protected health information for prescribed entities. IEEE 802.11-2007 and IEEE 802.15.4-2006 are compared with respect to their security provisions in the patient monitoring environment. This study demonstrates that IEEE 802.11-2007 has a slight edge over IEEE 802.15.4-2006 due to the specification of port-based user authentication with IEEE 802.1X/EAP. A security filtering database external to the wireless protocols may provide sufficient support to secure protected health information by automatically filtering protected data from disallowed entities.