Data Security in Smart Cities: Challenges and Solutions

The purpose of this paper is to provide an extensive overview of security-related problems in the context of smart cities, seen as huge data consumers and producers. Trends as hyper connectivity, messy complexity, loss of boundary and industrialized hacking transform smart cities in complex environments in which the already-existing security analysis are not useful anymore. Specific data-security requirements and solutions are approached in a four-layer framework, with elements considered to be critical to the operation of a smart city: smart things, smart spaces, smart systems and smart citizens. As urban management should pay close attention to security and privacy protection, network protocols, identity management, standardization, trusted architecture etc., the paper will serve them as a start point for better decisions in security design and management.