Smart cities: Security by design? It takes a village

The term “smart city” is used in many ways. According to StrategITcom, the definition of a smart city is “a collection of applications that use common secure infrastructures, data center(s) and device level data repositories for communication of critical and noncritical data.” Smart cities are not just a novel idea. Addressing the delivery of services and improving the quality of life for city dwellers is a social imperative, as 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban centers by 2050.

Examples of the benefits of smart cities include low- or no-cost public transportation, environmental quality improvement, better access to healthcare, broader access to educational opportunity and learning, and improved standard of living. The concept of technology enabling a better life comes with a duty of care that makes it essential we don’t deploy innovations with security problems under the assumption that we’ll fix them later. The potential human toll that comes from disruption of city services, reduced access to healthcare, and loss of sensitive personal information is too great to risk deploying smart-city technology without commensurate protection of systems and data across the board.

Unfortunately, there are many barriers to the kind of “common secure infrastructure” in this context. Security in smart cities is by no means a given, and it’s time we address this now.

Serious Consquences
My friend and colleague, Tyler Svitak, is executive director of Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, the first statewide alliance of government, business, and allied organizations dedicated to advancing smarter communities in the US. As Tyler puts it, smart-city security breaches have potentially very serious consequences beyond just data breaches. They can be economically devastating and even life-threatening, if not handled appropriately.

Smart cities are often focused on what applications or use cases can benefit the community, which takes significant time, engagement, and resources to plan and implement. Security is rarely at the forefront of the discussion. Why? The way I see it, the answer comes down to a few different reasons.

The first is that, simply put, security has not been top of mind when these technologies were being developed. Historically, one of the biggest challenges with deploying complex emerging technology has been just getting it to work in the first place. By introducing security controls, it becomes a significantly more difficult and lengthy process.

The second reason is that a significant portion of the systems that make up municipal infrastructure doesn’t fall under the category of traditional information technology (IT).

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