Over the last few months i have had little time to continue my research and writing for this blog hence the gap of three months. I am now able to continue and will pick of where i left off with SAFE modelling, NIST CSF and Smart City Cyber Security as well as new topics such as Digital Twins, Drones and the impending ISO 21434 standard.
Several things have caught my attention over the last few months including a recent news article from Edinburgh City Council about their plans for a Smart City Operations Centre. The impact of Covid19 on cities and its citizens has been widely reported as well as a number of high profile cyber attacks in the UK on major Universities as students returned in September. One can assume these were opportunistic attacks where the perpetrators of the ransomware knew how much chaos they would cause. This may be a sign of attack types of the future where city services and infrastructure will be targeted during major events. So it is interesting to read the plans of Edinburgh Council and i have highlighted a list of some of them below.
Link to news article and a statement, the council said its plans will include:
- responding to the needs of a post-Covid capital city by driving forward digital transformation
- bridging the digital divide between Edinburgh’s most and least affluent areas, providing schools with the most advanced networks and kit
- creating a smart city operations centre to deliver transformative digital services using technologies such as the artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and advanced analytics
- installing smart city systems such as intelligent traffic signals, smart streetlights that can control their own luminosity, street bins that can signal when they’re full and smart sensors in council homes to predict, manage and prevent damage to properties such as damp
- increasing digital security to protect the council’s network and data
- reducing the council’s carbon footprint by reducing paper and print, reducing waste, and reusing or recycling equipment
- enhancing options for remote working for council employees
- taking advantage of global trends such as moving to cloud-based services to reduce costs.
Smart City Cyber Security 