Trend Micro Publishes Future Smart Cities Cybersecurity Checklist

As cities continue to grow smarter, they will also become easier to hack. With millions (if not billions) of dollars going into research for urban domains and the Internet of Things (IoT), there will be more opportunities to utilize technology to define, access and improve smart city services and infrastructure.

In these smart cities, information security plays a huge role in protecting the highest levels of confidentiality, availability and integrity for city resources and utilities.

To help guide the development of smart cities, Trend Micro Inc. announced a report entitled "Securing Smart Cities: Moving Toward Utopia with Security in Mind" which provided a quick ten steps cybersecurity checklist as a gut check when implanting new, smart technologies.

When developing smart cities, it is always important to balance functionality with security, according to Ryan Flores, Senior Manager, Future Threat Research, Trend Micro, "Smart technology implementations in critical sectors can be attacked and the absence of well-defined security standards and regulations can turn projected benefits into unforeseen problems."

The 10 steps governments should look at when implementing smart technologies are:

1. Perform quality inspection and penetration testing.
2. Prioritize security in SLAs for all vendors and service providers.
3. Establish a municipal CERT or CSIRT.
4. Ensure the consistency and security of software updates.
5. Plan around the life cycle of smart infrastructures.
6. Process data with privacy in mind.
7. Encrypt, authenticate and regulate public communication channels.
8. Always have a manual override ready.
9. Design a fault-tolerant system.
10. Ensure the continuity of basic services.

"Cities will continue to grow smarter over time.  They are created by the people, and for the people. So it's only right to protect them," concluded Flores.