For technologists, building smart cities is not an aspirational goal but a matter of necessity. The World Bank estimates that 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2050, up from 56% today. This massive population shift will place increasing pressure on city infrastructure and technology used to manage urban areas. Increased automation will also bring new threats.
While the concept of a smart city may seem monolithic, in reality it is a collection of independent technologies and systems communicating with each other and a central management hub, creating a diverse ecosystem of technologies — one that needs to be well secured, says Piyush Pandey, the US cyber data market leader at business consultancy Deloitte. In many cases, those technologies have not been adequately secured individually, let alone as an interdependent ecosystem exposed to the public, he says.
Recent Comments