As our cities are becoming ever more connected, protecting systems and people is paramount. From healthcare to retail, transport to finance, everything is interconnected and can be hacked. These vulnerabilities threaten governments and companies the world over. Security experts Kaspersky offer solutions for almost every scenario to defend the cities of the future.
Kaspersky’s interactive Smart City Map offers an intuitive, easy-to-use sector-by-sector breakdown of the threats posed by cyber-attacks, helping organisations quickly understand the dangers they face and how to mitigate them. Dive into a remarkable resource for planners of our future cities.
The threats facing smart cities are numerous and varied. Across all sectors, organisations must embrace a culture of security: over 80% of all cyber-incidents are caused by human error, according to Kaspersky. The innovative Smart City Map divides a city into sectors to highlight the threats and defences that business and security decision-makers need to know.
Finance
The financial industry is one of the most attractive sectors for cyber-attacks. Kaspersky can offer financial firms proactive defence, preventing attacks before they occur with real-time responses. From money laundering to account fraud, many attacks can be discovered early. Many of these defences involve understanding legitimate activities and finding irregular activity.
Embedded systems require multi-layered protection against a range of threats. This should include system hardening, integrity monitoring, self-protection and support for old operating systems, hardware and weak communication channels, and incident investigation.
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) require threat detection and incident response. APT defences involve many techniques to cover entry points and detect attacks. Advanced capabilities in detection, intelligence, hunting and response will allow teams to better deal with APTs. Threat intelligence, alongside endpoint detection systems and APT defences, can protect networks from complex attacks.
Healthcare
Smart healthcare is a crucial vulnerability. Data breaches are concerning, and endpoints are vulnerable; class-leading endpoint protection is the first line of defence. The digitisation of patient care is vital which means prioritising data security. Protect email, data storage systems and servers, and threats detected and responded to within the organisation’s standard protocols. Employees’ devices must be managed through a centralised system and protective software with local and remote tools deployed.
Transport
 Passenger security and privacy are serious concerns, needing a suite of threat-resistant apps. Secure apps provide visibility into a vehicle’s infrastructure and must be built using proven mobile software development kits in a consistent framework with internal threat resistance.
A series of steps can improve in-vehicle security, including using μKernel architecture, native protection profiles, virtualisation support and adherence to cybersecurity standards and regulations. Existing vulnerabilities should be detected, and market-leading technologies adopted, with new vulnerabilities patched virtually. All connected vehicles should be controlled from a single point.
All vehicle-related infrastructure should be protected; threats should be detected and responded to. All endpoints need to be hardened and the staff’s mobile devices should be secured plus company email, proxy servers and data.
Government
Governments face too many complex threats to respond in an ad-hoc manner; they require an adaptive, integrated approach that can address an evolving array of threats, making use of anonymised intelligence data.
To support digitalisation (e-government), government bodies need proven prediction models and data mining methods to discover new, emerging fraud types. Large datasets of citizens’ non-personal behaviour allow governments to detect cyber-attacks before damage occurs.
Citizens’ data must be protected from data breaches. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems offer defence in-depth with automation ensuring that attacks are dealt with quickly and the source of the attack identified. Managed detection and response (MDR) services can enhance detection and response without additional time lags.
Manufacturing
To defend industrial technologies, leaders must invest in holistic IT and OT security. Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity offers a suite of technologies and services to secure vital industrial layers and elements without impacting continuity and manufacturing.
Leaders should understand their environment and identify security flaws across ICS layers. Critical assets including secure OT nodes, software and hardware must be secured, not forgetting industrial endpoints and cloud and on-site servers.
Kaspersky offers tools to secure every component of your interconnected systems. This protection helps establish a fully validated Chain of Trust without impacting operations.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) must be protected through industrial endpoint defences. The security team must understand the latest threats, and devices must be protected, including low-power, POS and legacy Windows-based embedded systems. Assess security continually to tackle threats before they sabotage critical infrastructure systems.
Retail
Direct-to-Customer sales platforms – including point of sale (POS) systems, workstations, mobile devices and back-office systems – can be protected in many ways, thanks to Kaspersky’s tools.
Every endpoint in the sales process must be secured through defence-in-depth, including mobile devices used to manage the system and on-premises and cloud servers and embedded systems, such as POS and legacy systems. Security flaws must be rooted out, and extended detection and response systems must protect customer data.
Kaspersky Fraud Prevention balances the usability and security of digital services with flexible case management and forensic capabilities that significantly reduce operational costs. Cyber-fraud can be stopped before it occurs. Suspicious customers and accounts can be identified and defended against.
Customer data must be protected across multiple layers. All data must be encrypted. When staff leave the organisation, their credentials must be revoked. Defend every endpoint using robust EDR solutions, including automated responses and simple root cause analysis. Additionally, all-in-one extended anti-attack detection and response systems can defeat complex attacks, and content filtering mechanisms protect gateways. Also remember to protect low-end systems, including legacy Windows-based and POS systems.
The challenges defending a smart city from cyber-threats are myriad and can feel overwhelming to even the most seasoned InfoSec pro. But thanks to advances in protective systems, it’s possible to mitigate and prevent crippling attacks.
Defend the city of the future, block by block, with Kaspersky’s interactive Smart City Map.
