Issues of Privacy and Security in the Role of Software in Smart Cities

Throughout the evolution of cities, the very structure of what defines a city has been changing. There has been a huge amount of advancement from the ancient settlements to modern metropolitans and now the next step in the evolution of cities is here - smart cities. Smart cities have come up to counter act the ills of the industrial cities that produce a many bad side effects. Smart cities have been known to be environment friendly, better organized, have better mobility, and a more competent economy. In meeting these necessary objectives, the role of software can make the smart city more integrated and functional as a whole. But the use of smart software, as we call it, can pose problems pertaining to the security and integrity of the smart city's data and privacy. Therefore the need arises to understand and evaluate the concerns of security and privacy that come up with smart software before they can be used in full scale. This paper concentrates on these issues.

I. Introduction

The evolution of cities has been taking a toll on the environment as the human population and its needs have been increasing and so the pressure on nature has been ever escalating. In today's world, sustainability is a major issue because if we continue to exploit resources and services without any thought about the generations that will follow us, the future of the human race may no longer have enough resources to live by. Today, industrial development is as important as environmental issues; safety is as important as saving time; continuous availability of resources is as important as not exploiting them and so on. To match both sides of the scale, the citizens of principal cities across the world have to become more informed and responsible as the world moves from being a world of industrial cities towards one that comprises smarter cities that are more environmentally stable, resourceful, interconnected, intelligent and instrumental [1] towards building a world that is as industrially powerful as sustainable. That is, we have to meet alter our present ways of life to satisfy the needs for securing the future. With the cities progressing towards smarter societies, the world's information and communications technology (ICT) is also advancing and in turn, a class of software is ushering itself into the IT sector today called ‘green software’ or ‘smart software’. The primary role of smart software is to enable the functioning of the devices running them in such a way that the device is eco-friendly and aids to the smart behavior of a city. For smart software to increase the functioning and sustainability of a smart city as a whole, the devices with smart software must contribute to the entire system. As software systems are vulnerable to threats, the smart city should be prepared for such attacks and breach of security. The current paper investigates these issues of security and integrity related to the smart software and gives a conclusion as to whether smart software create more problems than they solve.