Beyond Smart Cities: Privacy concerns and ways to protect yourself

For decades, migration to cities from rural areas has been on the high side. This migration trend that has been observed is astonishing. However, it pales in comparison to the future of smart cities.

Smart cities are contemporary cities that harness the power of information technology to improve several aspects of human life. Smart cities reduce environmental footprints because they encourage energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. This also benefits the health of residents through the reduction of air pollution.

Smart sensors in smart cities can also be used to reduce water wastage by spotting pipe leaks. In a smart city, there is bound to be better infrastructure since systems will detect regions that need fixing.

The Privacy Dangers of a Smart City

Despite this implementation of technological advancement, there is a catch: the collection of data. Smart cities are formed with sand, concrete, and most importantly, data. A humongous amount of data is recorded from home appliances, smartphones, refuse bins, vehicles, and so on. A city holding this kind of power is bound to get involved in the misuse of data.

Let’s look at the possibilities. A smart city is touted to contain autonomous vehicles with the benefit of lessened accidents. While facing the advantage, people fail to realize that before this can be achieved, vehicles in a smart city will have to be inter-connected. Will you feel comfortable with thousands of cars tracking your location and movements?

On the issue of smart appliances in the home, it sounds great on paper. But we’ve seen instances of these devices being hacked. For instance, Amazon’s Alexa speakers were used to listen in on customers’ conversations. Samsung’s Smart Fridge was reportedly hacked by the CIA.

Smart cities are also likely to use drones as a means of surveillance. Try to imagine hundreds of drones flying across your city, monitoring every step you take. The result would be an encroachment on human rights and massive breaches of privacy.

There have been instances where smart city project outlines were rejected. In 2017, Google’s smart city project in Toronto faced push back by privacy experts after a review by an independent panel. The panel cited privacy issues as the key antagonist in Google’s project. 

The Remedy to Smart Cities’ Privacy Issues

Before any smart city gets established, the planning of the city should include the residents. A body representing the people should also be consulted on privacy guidelines with the response of the residents upheld. In sections where the people feel they need change, it will have to be implemented.

After the creation of the smart city, the administration will also need to be transparent about data collection, storage, and usage. Besides, citizens can also do their part to protect their personal data. For instance, they should only give out information when necessary and use a VPN to stay private and anonymize their internet activities, especially when they are on public Wi-Fi provided by the government.

(The Big Disrupt) IoT: Schizophrenia

How do you ever get anything done?

How do we, as a society, ever get anything done?

Every ten seconds some kind of notification is demanding our attention. Emails from friends and colleagues, social media blips, timers, news updates, the list goes on forever. We are subjected to a constant barrage of digital noise.

And not just in one place.

We have phones, tablets, laptops, desktops and connected vehicles, just to name a few. There is never a moment when we are more than ten feet from a device that is connected to the internet. Not only is this a huge tax on our attention and the main culprit of what many call ‘shiny object syndrome’, it is also a huge risk to our personal data.

All day as we Tweet, post, reply, and consume, our data is passing through the airwaves on some kind of connection. Some of those connections are more secure than others, depending on the awareness and technical aptitude of the proprietor of a given wireless hotspot. However, by and large, the measures that are in place to secure our personal musings and private data are woefully inadequate.

The number of connected and mobile devices we use keeps increasing while the measures that protect us lag behind.

The next time you pick up a shiny new internet enabled gadget it is well worth asking how it may affect your privacy.

(The Big Disrupt) CIO: Why 2017 is going to look a lot like 2016 for CIO's and CISO's

As terrible years go, 2016 was terrible for CIO's and CISO's everywhere as data breaches reached record levels. 2015 was no better and many were predicting 2016 to be worse but few could have predicted Yahoo's reporting a record data leak (on top of another mammoth data leak) or the effect hacking would have on the recent US election as the fallout of both events are sure to spill well into 2017. 

There isn't, or at least there shouldn't  be any CIO and CISO looking upon 2017 with a glass half full as all the problems that has made the last five years a living hell for CIO's and CISO  still exist and in some cases, are almost certainly going to get worse.  

A combination of low transaction costs in favor of hackers, cybersecurity talent shortages and the ever expanding amount of data collected by organizations in both the public and private sector were big reasons why 2016 was the year of the hack and why 2017 will almost certainly follow suit. All these problems are compounded by both companies and governments unwilling share information about breaches with each other which would help avoid the notable trend of enterprise level companies falling victim to the same exploits. 

Hackers on the other hand frequently collaborate and share new malware and exploits which has contributed to why the market for stolen data and malware is arguably the most vibrant and dynamic market on the net. As long as this persists, we'll continue to see a steady stream of news stories that have come to define the year past.  

2016 was trying for CIO's and CISO's but it was abysmal for cybersecurity as an industry as U.S officials openly talked about intervening. While it's not exactly clear whether governments can improve the level of cybersecurity, it's quite clear something has to be done as the industry is the picture of market failure. 2017 won't be any better as calls for the government to get involved will almost certainly get louder despite cybersecurity being a growth market in the face of record year on year spikes in data breaches. 

In sum, CIO's and CISO's know the year ahead will look like the year past and are painfully aware of how little they can do about it as while they do everything in their power to secure their organization's IT infrastructure, they're fighting an enemy that has all the advantages and they know it. This is an indictment of the sorry state of cybersecurity as an industry and its inability to find solutions to combat attackers effectively and should it continue, the most dangerous thing you do all day will be switching on your computer.