Securing Smart Cities’ First Year: The Supporting Community Grows Three-fold

Just a year has passed since Securing Smart Cities – a not-for-profit global initiative that aims to raise awareness and solve the existing and future cybersecurity problems of smart cities – was launched. Since that time the initiative’s supporting community has increased three-fold: from 10 cybersecurity experts from all over the world, to more than 30. In addition, the number of supporting organizations has grown, from four to fifteen.

During the past year Securing Smart Cities supporters and contributors have been successful in increasing awareness of the potential cyber security problems in smart cities. The initiative has published several documents that can help city authorities considering how to adopt Smart City technologies properly, and how to organize a Smart City Security Department. Several practical research assessments have also been conducted, and their findings published. These have covered major smart city security issues, surveillance system problems, and city communication networks and their availability to attackers.

In parallel, Securing Smart Cities representatives have participated in a number of topical events. Most notably, an initiative representative briefed the US government on the state of smart city security. An initiative contributor also helped the European Union Agency for Network in conducting two studies concerning the possible security issues in smart city public transportation.

In the future Securing Smart Cities will continue to increase awareness about security issues in cities, sharing its expertise with city authorities through the publication of security guides and research dedicated to different areas of the security of future cities.
There is a tremendous need for more awareness on the issue of cybersecurity in cities. Cities continue to get smarter and constantly incorporate new technologies into their infrastructure, but often ignore the importance of cybersecurity. Securing Smart Cities is playing a key role in educating the main actors, such as governments, vendors, professionals, etc., about current cybersecurity problems and the possible solutions for smart cities.

“In its first year the Securing Smart Cities collaborative initiative has made substantial progress – before we started the topic was rarely discussed, but now many more people are aware of the cybersecurity implications of smart city technologies, and have started trying to address the issues we have raised. While we’re really just getting started and there is a lot of work to do, the results from the first year have been amazing and are a big incentive for us to continue working hard to help cities around the world be more secure and better protect their citizens,” said Cesar Cerrudo, Securing Smart Cities Board Member and CTO at IOActive.

“One thing we learned this year, is that there is a considerable need for research around the security of smart cities to be given a higher priority. The ‘Securing Smart Cities’ community is trying hard to evolve research in this area and there is still much more to be done. Overall, we have had a successful year. Our documents are already being utilized by world leaders and decision makers for the planning and development of their strategies, and we look forward to achieving even more in the upcoming year”, said Mohammad Amin Hasbini, Securing Smart Cities Board Member, and Security Expert at Kaspersky Lab.