Have you ever been present for that magic moment when all the street lights in your city turn on at the same time? When I was a young kid I used to picture a person - a night light conductor - sitting in a room looking at their wristwatch and when the time struck 7 they would flip a big switch turning on all of the city lights. Now I’m older and I know that neither this person nor this big night light switch exists and that this magic moment happens thanks to a preset automated system. In fact, cities today that are filled with sensors, cables, and digital networks rely on thousands of software running in parallel giving their citizens reliable and functioning automated systems. Just like the night lights. They control our traffic, street lights, underground metro systems, telecommunication antennas, wifi routers, energy and water distribution, weather monitoring you name it. Only a handful of urban infrastructure operates on gears and cogs and the rest is digital. Fundamentally this means that a “smart city” is a “hackable” city, a reality that needs to be addressed as we embellish our cities with more and more digital infrastructure.

So, whether we want to think about it or not, cities and their citizens today are more vulnerable and exposed than ever to digital threats. Urban Technologists Julia McGee and Kriti Nirmal have taken a deep dive into the fundamentals of cybercrime in cities and through this discussion, we will talk about what can be done to avoid them and how we can improve the security of smart cities.