How should Singapore and other smart cities deal with the increasing risk of cyber threats?

Fifty years after its establishment, Singapore is a smart city-state success story at the forefront of a third industrial revolution. Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) increasingly interconnects Singapore’s cyber and physical systems, sensors and smart technology into the digital fabric that links society and critical infrastructures such as transportation, health, finance and defense. Infrastructure investment is expected to grow by 50% to about $30 billion by the end of the decade.

But as Singapore and other smart cities become increasingly connected to cyberspace, so too does their risk of cyber threats. For the next 50 years to be as prosperous as the last, Singapore and other smart cities and nations need to develop a cyber-smart workforce, technology, policies and new risk management solutions.
Cyber Smart City: Opportunity and Challenge

The Cyber Smart City Opportunity of new IoT-inspired products, services and markets could boost the gross domestic product (GDP) of the world’s 20 largest economies by $14.2 trillion in 2030, according to a recent study by Accenture. This trend can be seen in Singapore’s smart buildings, where converged information and operational technologies infrastructures, control systems and sensors integrate multiple electronic systems to support building management and business functions. Smart building technology is increasing energy efficiency and conservation of natural resources. Smart transportation is making cities more efficient. Smart health solutions are making cities healthier and providing early warning against pandemics.

The Cyber Smart City Challenge is to secure all of these converged networks and devices from cyber threats. Hackers continue to exploit smart devices to steal, manipulate and disrupt cyber and physical systems. Cyber attacks have been used to infiltrate corporate networks through smart building controls, blow up furnaces in steel plants and cause generators to fail. In 2013, Target, a large US retailer, was hacked through its smart heating ventilation and cooling system, exposing corporate networks and over 40 million customers’ credit cards. Similar vulnerabilities are prevalent in thousands of networked smart systems.

A cyber-secure smart city will require a more holistic cyber security approach that fosters a culture of cyber security. Traditional information assurance solutions to risk management are challenged by IoT’s expanded attack landscape: more networked devices exchanging larger data sets. Secondly, many industrial control systems need to be running 24/7, they lack secure communication protocol and include legacy devices that are not interoperable or secure when combined with new IoT technology.