EviSlice: Evidence-Driven and Clinically Aware Zero-Touch Security Slicing for 6G-Enabled Healthcare IoT

Abstract

Future 6G Healthcare Internet-of-Things (H-IoT) networks must protect clinical services that differ widely in urgency, reliability, and disruption tolerance. Although network slicing and zero-touch management offer a strong foundation for automated healthcare traffic control, existing approaches remain largely infrastructure-centric and often overlook evidence trustworthiness, service criticality, and the safety of automated security actions. This article presents EviSlice, an evidence-driven and clinically aware zero-touch security slicing framework for 6G-enabled H-IoT. EviSlice integrates multi-source evidence correlation, clinical criticality profiling, trust and provenance evaluation, explainable decision logic, and closed-loop slice-security orchestration. Its relevance is demonstrated through a Smart Hospital-Ambulance-Home Monitoring Continuum case study and compared with Static secure slice provisioning, KPI-ZSM adaptation, and security SLA (SSLA)-based closed-loop slicing. The results show that EviSlice improves clinical continuity, reduces false-positive interruptions, and enables faster, context-sensitive security mitigation while supporting practical deployment pathways.