Organisations need better network security for smart cities as more devices and machines go online, notes Stormshield‘s Vincent Nicaise.
Nicaise, industrial partnership and ecosystem manager at Stormshield, said ‘smarter’ or more connected cities have expanded the points of potential access for cyberattack to urban ‘furniture’ such as street lights.
“Behind this modernisation of practices in the urban environment lies the same problem as with other elements of the smart city,” he said on the Stormshield cybersecurity blog.
Public lighting often incorporates sensors as well as street lamps and sensors.
Yet local government typically focuses on streamlining operational efficiency for less cost. Lighting in France, for example, uses about €2 billion (£1.7bn) of local authority budget, he said.
“Public lighting must also be monitored, supervised and protected, because every device in the connected city is able to return data,” Nicaise said. “It is also required to improve the safety of residents. The issue at stake is continuity of service in local authorities.”
Smarter savings on security
He said that connected ‘smart’ lights can be enabled for detection of people and their movements in the vicinity, and can do things like adjusting brightness or monitoring equipment – potentially helping save money.
However, such “hyper-connectivity” expands the smart city’s attack surface. And in addition to being sensitive, its entire infrastructure can become vulnerable, Nicaise noted.
Therefore, cybersecurity approaches needed should be end to end, considering the overall connectivity architectures, network segmentation, flow control and communications channels. Encryption and multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be applied where relevant.
It should be about taking account of the various layers of industrial networks, all the way down to smart public lighting on the streets. Backing up should not be neglected either.
Defend against network access and data leaks
While data related to lighting activity or intensity might seem of little interest to cybercriminals, access-related data that enables them to move onto other internal networks is, he pointed out.
“To this end, the concept of defence in depth underpins urban cybersecurity: it is an approach that aims to secure each subsystem, as opposed to focusing solely on perimeter security,” Nicaise explained.
“Additionally, continuous software updates for smart equipment can prevent security breaches and effectively respond to the ever-evolving cyber-threats – though this is often easier said than done.”
Stormshield offers network, endpoint and data security solutions for hybrid, IoT, heterogeneous and IT/OT environments.
