we consider ourselves lucky if we don’t get stuck in traffic while driving to the office. The struggle of even finding a parking spot for your car is real. The smart city industry is projected to reach the $400 billion mark by 2020. The urban population is increasing at an alarming rate. According to one survey, 65% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2040. It sounds like chaos to me. We will need cybersecurity to ensure the sanity in smart cities.

Cybersecurity in Smart Cities – The Problem Statement

In 2012, a Puerto Rico electric utility company asked the FBI’s help after its smart meters got hacked and reprogrammed. When the company was reprogrammed, it allowed many people to pay substantially lower electricity bills. Smart meters had been introduced by the company to improve the efficiency and comfort of its consumers.

Identifying Vulnerabilities – What determines the safety of Smart Cities?
Everything is connected during a smart city.

Having everything connected exposes the likelihood of multiple pain points during a single infrastructure. Even one vulnerable endpoint can corrupt the whole infrastructure allowing data theft, device hijacking, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), and more.
To give you a far better idea. Let’s say that there are three systems – A, B, and C connected to one server in an infrastructure. If an attacker finds a security flaw in Endpoint three of System C, they need entered and may find yourself corrupting all the connected endpoints and systems of the whole infrastructure.

The server of any smart city infrastructure is meant to assist consumers and has user-centric information. It might be anything from trivial data – names and addresses to tip .
Confidential information includes checking account details, IP addresses, and other information.

Though the importance of knowledge you share during a smart city infrastructure won’t seem important to you, but the knowledge may be a blessing for a hacking entity. A hacker loves knowledge.

As such, the primary step towards a secure smart city is identifying vulnerabilities and possible entry points for hackers in each infrastructure. It might be one , smart meter in an in depth power system system.

Remember how we were talking about hitting just green lights on the thanks to our offices. Imagine the chaos during a smart city with thousands of vehicles on the road if someone hacks into the traffic infrastructure and turns every light to green.

The Role of Connected Devices

By 2025, there’ll be over 21 billion connected IoT devices, says US Norton, an online security company. once we are talking about sensors, smart infrastructure, smart electricity, and smart data, what ties all of them together? the solution is that the Internet of Things.

Remember, shortly ago, everyone was talking about smart homes and the way your smartphone can control the functioning of everything in it? Well, a sensible city is like implementing the technology of smart homes within the entire city.

You may be wondering why you ought to put your confidential data at stake? the foremost straightforward answer is that without the web of Things, connected devices, or shared information, the concept of a sensible city would remain a dream.

Security of a sensible City: Where to Begin?

The entire concept of smart cities is relatively new, and one among the various challenges faced in cyber-securing a sensible city is that the lack of anticipated intelligence.