ObjectiveThis review paper aims to evaluate existing solutions in healthcare
authentication and provides an insight into the technologies incorporated in
Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) and multi-factor authentication (MFA)
applications for next-generation authentication practices. Our review has
two objectives: (a) Review MFA based on the challenges, impact and solutions
discussed in the literature; and (b) define the security requirements of the
IoHT as an approach to adapting MFA solutions in a healthcare context.MethodsTo review the existing literature, we indexed articles from the IEEE Xplore,
ACM Digital Library, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink databases. The search
was refined to combinations of ‘authentication’, ‘multi-factor
authentication’, ‘Internet of Things authentication’, and ‘medical
authentication’ to ensure that the retrieved journal articles and conference
papers were relevant to healthcare and Internet of Things-oriented
authentication research.ResultsThe concepts of MFA can be applied to healthcare where security can often be
overlooked. The security requirements identified result in stronger
methodologies of authentication such as hardware solutions in combination
with biometric data to enhance MFA approaches. We identify the key
vulnerabilities of weaker approaches to security such as password use
against various cyber threats. Cyber threats and MFA solutions are
categorised in this paper to facilitate readers’ understanding of them in
healthcare domains.ConclusionsWe contribute to an understanding of up-to-date MFA approaches and how they
can be improved for use in the IoHT. This is achieved by discussing the
challenges, benefits, and limitations of current methodologies and
recommendations to improve access to eHealth resources through additional
layers of security.