Cyber Security Challenges Essay
Elmaghraby and Losavio(2014) argue that there is an increase in the evolution of smart cities. According to them, these smart cities create new social and economic opportunities; however, they pose serious challenges to the security and privacy expectations of consumers across the globe. Martinez-Balleste, Perez-martinez and Solanas (2013) add that Innovations in the IT industry will result in unprecedented advances in the quality of living. These innovations are taking place in the midst of several changes in the city infrastructure and services geared towards enhancing control, automation and monitoring. Key characteristics of the smart cities will be the ability to access a set of interlinked data from GPS location to traffic and weather updates.Cyber Security Challenges Essay On the one hand, technological innovations in smart cities will be a key ingredient towards improving the quality of life. On the other hand, these innovations are integrated smart gadgets and appliance which raises the question of privacy and security. Digitalization of services exposes the activities and location of the users and these throws privacy out of the window. Smart cities present numerous benefits spanning from security devices, smart appliances to smart energy meters. Integrated systems enhance the dissemination of data via social networks and other media systems increasing public participation and the swift identification of crime suspects. However, concerns have emerged as to whether the use of these instrumental, unmediated, and interconnected social links pose risks that outweigh the advantages. In summary, the benefits of integrated IT systems in smart cities outweigh by far the security and privacy risks in a democratic society when the rights and liberties of users are safeguarded.Cyber Security Challenges Essay
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Age of Big Data and Smart Cities: Privacy Trade-Off
According to Ahmed, Bouhorma and Ahmed (2014), big data will be a very precious commodity in the future. They argue that continued creation of data on a daily basis will lead to the creation of smart cities. Recorded, stored and analyzed data are critical aspects that define the provision of services in the globe today. The age of technological revolution is characterized by the provision of services through, not only smart technology, but also smart agriculture, education, transport, government, homes among others. The huge volume of data captured by business ventures on a day to day basis coupled with the increased use of social media, the internet and multimedia will fuel unprecedented growth in data in the near future. In the foreseeable future, machines such as power stations, planes, trains and cars will be contributing significant amount of data on a daily basis. The massive amount of data being collected is a signal to consumers that their security and privacy hangs in the balance(Singh &Pelton, 2013). Once the personal data is released into public domain it never disappears and this presents a critical challenge to personal privacy. It is therefore important for consumers to ensure that they only release data that they are comfortable of sharing. Arguably, smart cities and big data present exponential opportunity to improve the quality of life. Therefore, technology companies should be responsible enough by ensuring the privacy of the user is safeguarded as smart cities take central stage in the data world.
Characterizing Privacy Leakage of Public WiFiNetworks for Users on Travel
Cheng et al., (2013) point out that internet access for individuals on travel has become more convenient due to the deployment of public hotspots. These public internet access points, however, pose a serious threat in as far as privacy is concerned. Activities such as web browsing, online advertising, and search engine querying as well as domain name querying have the potential to leak private data when accessing the internet via public wireless access hotspots. Cheng et al., (2013) reveals that such activities pose multiple data leakage of the user’s private information including personal privacy, financial privacy, location privacy, identity privacy and social privacy. Interestingly, most users are not aware that by accessing the internet through public wireless environments they risk their personal privacy. Cyber Security Challenges Essay Various studies conducted on the subject under investigation reveal that public Wi-Fi pose a crucial security threat to users since it expose their personal information to potential hackers. Public Wi-Fi systems allow users within the same communication network to eavesdrop personal information belonging to other users. This study suggests that privacy leakages can be eliminated through the use of VPN, which hide or encrypts data. Other data protection platforms include PRIVATEWi-Fi and open VPN. However, data protection mechanism often requires monthly subscriptions from users, consequently, limiting their accessibility. Increased data leakages and the high cost of data protectors compel website designers and network service providers to improve the user privacy by developing better mechanisms to protect the privacy of end users.
Towards Cloud based Smart Cities Data Security and Privacy Management
Khan, Pervez and Ghafoor(2014) contend that emergence of smart cities has resulted in the accumulation and processing of large data volumes that pose privacy and security levels to both individuals and communities. Significant efforts have been made in order to safeguard the privacy of individual and community data from potential risk. Khan, Pervez and Ghafoor(2014) highlights issues surrounding data privacy and security that have emerged as a result of cloud based solutions applied in smart cities.Cyber Security Challenges Essay Available literature on the topic reveals that smart city solutions, such as IoT-A and SMARTIE demand a comprehensive strategy when addressing smart city trust issues, user privacy and data security. Undeniably, the emergence of new technologies such as actuators smartphones, cloud computing, environmental censors and their application in smart cities offer the opportunity to gather and effectively utilize large scale information for creating awareness and decision making. However, new threats regarding the privacy of the users within these networks have emerged with these new opportunities. Inherent cloud computing security concerns such as physical access, remote data center among others can contribute to substantial security risks. In order to manage these data, proper privacy and security measures that can assist in building trust as well as adopting smarts solutions in smart cities by various stakeholders.
Security and Privacy in your Smart City
The large numbers of individuals living in urban cities has made the concept smart cities an inevitable one. Smart cities refer to transformation in the urban environment through the integration of the latest technologies in the ICT industry, thereby enhancing the efficiency of these cities. Given the impact of smart cities on the livelihood of many individuals, security and privacy issues have come into focus. Bartoli et al. (2011) assert that an increase in security breaks in the internet, smartphone and sensing infrastructure have made privacy and security issues to become integral during building design. Cyber Security Challenges Essay
The concept of smart cities aims at improving the quality of life as well as enhancing the quality and efficiency of the services offered by businesses and government entities. As a crucial infrastructure component that will define the future society, smart cities require the highest degrees of security. This would mean that the design of infrastructure in these cities will require pre-designed security measures. The biggest issue about smart architecture is that the sensors integrated in the building can be fed with fake data(Seto, 2015). The challenge is that the more computerized a city is the more interconnection is created and this open access to the information gathered by the systems posing security threats. Security risks in smart cities are current and real and as a result, efforts need to institute in order to protect personal data form possible vulnerabilities. Finally, proper management is necessary in order to offer efficient and reliable measures of providing secure smart cities going into the future.
References
Ahmed, K. B., Bouhorma, M., & Ahmed, M. B. (2014). Age of Big Data and Smart Cities: Privacy Trade-Off. International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology, 16 (6), 298 -304.Cyber Security Challenges Essay
Bartoli, A., Hernández-Serrano, J., Soriano, M., Dohler, M., Kountouris, A., &Barthel, D. (2011, December).Security and privacy in your smart city.In Proceedings of the Barcelona Smart Cities Congress.
Cheng, N., Wang, X., Cheng, W., Mohapatra, P., &Seneviratne, A. (2013, April).Characterizing privacy leakage of public WiFi networks for users on travel.In INFOCOM, 2013 Proceedings IEEE (pp. 2769-2777).IEEE.
Elmaghraby, A. S., & Losavio, M. M. (2014). Cyber security challenges in Smart Cities: Safety, security and privacy. Journal of advanced research, 5(4), 491-497.
Khan, Z., Pervez, Z., &Ghafoor, A. (2014, December). Towards cloud based smart cities data security and privacy management. In Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC), 2014 IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on (pp. 806-811). IEEE.
Martinez-Balleste, A., Perez-martinez, P., &Solanas, A. (2013). The pursuit of citizens’ privacy: a privacy-aware smart city is possible. IEEE Communications Magazine, 51(6), N.PAG. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2013.6525606
Seto, Y. (2015). Application of Privacy Impact Assessment in the Smart City.Electronics & Communications In Japan, 98(2), 52-61. doi:10.1002/ecj.11661
Singh, I. B., &Pelton, J. N. (2013).Securing the cyber city of the future.Futurist, 47(6), 22-27.
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Cyber Security Challenges Essay