Cities Still Struggling To Balance Smartness, Security

Researcher Cesar Cerrudo and IOActive warn that cities worldwide are rapidly deploying smart-city technologies (traffic control, lighting, environmental sensors, gunshot detectors) without adequate security testing, leaving systems vulnerable to remote/wireless attacks that could disrupt services (for example by manipulating traffic lights). The article urges performing security assessments during procurement and adopting safeguards such as strong encryption, robust authentication, automatic updates, auditing/alerting, eliminating hard-coded backdoors, and contractual SLAs to hold vendors accountable.