Abstract

Smart cities are comprised of diverse and interconnected components constantly exchanging data and facilitating improved living for a nation’s population. Our view of a typical smart city consists of four key components, namely, Smart Grids, Building Automation Systems (BAS), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Smart Vehicles; with enabling Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and the Cloud platform. The adversarial threats and criminal misuses in a smart city are increasingly heterogenous and significant, with provisioning of resilient and end-to-end security being a daunting task. When a cyber incident involving critical components of the smart city infrastructure occurs, appropriate measures can be taken to identify and enumerate concrete evidence to facilitate the forensic investigation process. Forensic preparedness and lessons learned from past forensic analysis can help protect the smart city against future incidents. This paper presents a holistic view of the security landscape of a smart city, identifying security threats and providing deep insight into digital investigation in the context of the smart city.

Introduction

More than 50% of the world’s population today reside in urban areas and this percentage is expected to increase because of population migration to these regions in the quest for better jobs and education (Khatoun and Zeadally, 2016). The concept of the smart city represents the first major impetus for change in metropolissized urban planning since Victor Gruen re-envisioned the urban landscape in America in the 1950s. As a consequence, smart cities have recently gained attention; comprising a collection of entities deployed and maintained in a city to facilitate convenient and improved living for a nation’s population. Various initiatives worldwide have facilitated the emergence of smart cities that address the needs of businesses, institutions, and citizens, through targeted and efficient delivery of service. The smart city promise of provisioning a connected environment for all its citizens is realized through intelligent and sustainable enabling technologies and platforms including the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Cloud.