ARC/IMSA Webinar: Smart City Cybersecurity

ARC has partnered with the IMSA to do a series of smart cities focused webinars.  These impartial, non-commercial webinars will focus on applying the latest “smart cities” approaches to help improve municipal planning, electric vehicle fleet operations, cybersecurity, public safety, and other relevant areas.  Participants can earn continuing education credits (CECs) toward IMSA professional certifications. The series will utilize the user-friendly GoToWebinar® platform to make it easy to tune in to and participate in these one-hour webinars.  

I will be hosting this week’s webinar, which covers the subject of cybersecurity in smart cities. I will be talking about the unique set of cybersecurity challenges facing smart cities, the impact of COVID-19 on cybersecurity, the cybersecurity vendor landscape, the vendor selection process as it relates to cybersecurity, relevant standards, and more.  You can register for the webinar here, it’s Wednesday, June 24 at 11 AM Eastern.   

From Response to Resiliency: Cities Need to Step Up Their Cybersecurity Game

The immediate reaction to COVID-19 and managing the pandemic has created numerous challenges for cybersecurity as it relates to smart cities and their underlying systems.  The mass migration to a work-at-home environment has also created an increased demand for remote monitoring and operations for OT (operational technology) level assets.  COVID-19 has also created significant reductions in tax revenue around the globe, which means that cities and municipalities will have to do more with less.  Fewer people monitoring a wider range of assets in an increasingly remote environment is going to be the new reality.  Cities and local governments are really going to have to step up their cybersecurity game in the future in order to avoid these increasing vulnerabilities combined with an increasingly aggressive and sophisticated pool of threat actors looking to shut down or otherwise disrupt OT level systems in cities.