Security and privacy in smart cities: Challenges and opportunities

© 2013 IEEE. Smart cities are expected to improve the quality of daily life, promote sustainable development, and improve the functionality of urban systems. Now that many smart systems have been implemented, security and privacy issues have become a major challenge that requires effective countermeasures. However, traditional cybersecurity protection strategies cannot be applied directly to these intelligent applications because of the heterogeneity, scalability, and dynamic characteristics of smart cities. Furthermore, it is necessary to be aware of security and privacy threats when designing and implementing new mechanisms or systems. Motivated by these factors, we survey the current situations of smart cities with respect to security and privacy to provide an overview of both the academic and industrial fields and to pave the way for further exploration. Specifically, this survey begins with an overview of smart cities to provide an integrated context for readers. Then, we discuss the privacy and security issues in current smart applications along with the corresponding requirements for building a stable and secure smart city. In the next step, we summarize the existing protection technologies. Finally, we present open research challenges and identify some future research directions.