Elektra Labs and CMU collaborate on privacy and security labels of connected health sensors
Elektra Labs and Carnegie Mellon University researchers announced collaboration on an innovative IoT labeling system for understanding the data rights and security practices of connected health sensors.
Both organizations have published previous analysis regarding, and recommendations for use of, such a labeling system. As part of their collaboration, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab have contributed their research on an IoT Privacy and Security label as a blueprint, while Elektra Labs is incorporating its own published “tech nutrition label” recommendations as well.
Elektra Labs is excited to integrate the work of this collaboration into its proprietary, searchable catalog of 1000+ biosensors, called Atlas, which is currently the most comprehensive objective source of information on connected health sensors available.
Elektra Lab’s Atlas supports clients through a five-point evaluation framework — including validation, usability, security, data rights and other major considerations for trusted usage — for selecting the technology that best fits their specific initiatives.
“Evaluating concerns such as data rights and security practices of health IoT products can be tricky and situation-specific,” said Dena Mendelsohn, Director of Health Policy and Data Governance at Elektra Labs.
“A goal going into this project is to produce a label that serves as a warning system, guiding clinical research and care providers toward technology that meets a minimum threshold and highlighting potential speed bumps that can be addressed early.”
“People must be able to make informed decisions when it comes to technologies that interface with their health data,” said Yuvraj Agarwal, an Associate Professor of Computer Science affiliated with the CMU’s CyLab and Institute for Software Research, who served as a faculty advisor to the research team.
“We believe that IoT privacy and security labels can be very effective in empowering consumers to make more informed decisions by providing transparency about product manufacturers’ stated practices.”
This research was performed as part of a capstone project in the MSIT Privacy Engineering program at CMU. Elektra Labs and CMU have made available the resulting report as open access via Creative Commons licensing to benefit the community.