Massive IoT Initiative: Securing the Smart City

Source: Enterprise AI Published: July 2, 2020

According to Microsoft, one particular type of project accounts for close to one quarter of all global IoT initiatives: smart-city projects. In a 451 Research report from February 2020, analyst Johan Vermij notes that escalating interest in smart cities has led to the current situation, in which smart cities now comprise 23 percent of IoT projects on a worldwide basis—making them what Vermij describes as the “number one IoT vertical.” In fact, in Microsoft’s fourth year of the company’s “IoT in Action” events in Amsterdam earlier this year, the tech firm gave smart cities the dedicated focus for the first time.

As hyperconnected smart cities have become increasingly key to whether urban areas function smoothly or not, researchers have investigated the role of smart IoT edge devices and edge computing. One study on edge-computing-enabled smart cities—written by senior members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—stated that edge technology is “viable for realizing real-time smart cities advancements.” Yet after deriving five parameters—context awareness, scalability, sustainability, caching, and security—for rigorous evaluation, the researchers determined that “security has considerable importance among the other factors and thus must be implemented in the design of smart applications.”