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Advances in technology have driven the world towards being more connected ever. Every city around the world is now looking to automate the infrastructures to drive efficiency and reduce costs and cope with rising populations. This leads cities to become smart cities of the future, harnessing the power of digital transformation and data. Though it is not so distant future people will live in cities and societies that are totally connected to the internet and entire infrastructures rely on connected devices. While it may be possible to maintain smart connectivity, there will also need to account cyber risks.

In smart cities, devices are typically referred to as the internet of things (IoT), thus those devices may remain unsecure and open to hacking attempts. On the other hand, cybercriminals who always look for vulnerabilities can exploit the weaknesses smart cities possess. This will then put entire populations, government departments and huge businesses at stake.

Today, connected devices are proliferating at breakneck speed, with the number of IoT devices is expected to rise from 8.4 billion today to nearly 20 billion by 2020.

Enabling Cybersecurity in Smart Cities

As the cyber threats will continue to rise, cybersecurity will have to extend far beyond personal or internal corporate networks to comprise far-ranging technological protection for vast city networks. It can be accomplished through extensive testing and research and development. However, the list of connected devices vulnerabilities and exploits is extensive and augments each year with no true solutions in sight.

Smart cities can also be susceptible to numerous cyberattack techniques, including remote execution and signal jamming, as well as traditional means, such as malware, data manipulation, and DDOS. Thus, to counter these backdrops, comprehensive smart city plans designed to safeguard critical infrastructure are needed.

Moreover, in the rush to make cities smarter, civic managers must ensure that they build in cybersecurity that can protect them from diverse threat verticals seeking to create chaos. City leaders also need to use a wide array of technologies that work best leveraging a large city scale. As technological innovations like artificial intelligence, big data, robotics and IoT have the potential to transform human interactions, business performance and people’s livings, they can be constructive and develop cities of tomorrow.

While technology can undeniably adapt to overcome many challenges smart cities present, and efforts to unify both device and communications protection, the role of governments become evident and they will have to push new standards. Governments around the world need to set cybersecurity regulations, including how security is designed and maintained in connected devices that will circulate throughout buildings, from smart lighting to networked door systems.

For organizations tasked with deploying smart technology in residential, commercial and public spaces, they need to prepare plans to do so that must be part of the design and planning stage, including how human operators securely implement and maintain these smart spaces.

So, smart cities need a collaborative effort from public and private organizations to deliver better cybersecurity tools as well as cultural changes. Also, city leaders need to balance the promise of smart cities against the potential cyber risks.