The Cybersecurity and Privacy in Smart Cities

Dear Colleagues,

Smart cities have become the center of attention to governments and the private sector in the past few years, and they can potentially revolutionize the way we live, work, study, travel and do business. They use sensors, IoT and artificial intelligence to achieve significant efficiencies. They use a variety of communication technologies to provide access and transmit significant amounts of data. They use tremendous computing power to apply machine learning and data mining algorithms and analyze the data they collect to provide advice and support decision making in the city.

Many cities around the world have initiated smart cities projects. Examples of these are Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dubai, Amsterdam, Singapore and London. A number of companies globally have made multi-billion dollar investments in various smart cities initiatives. These include Google, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Alibaba and Baidu. A lot can be learned from the smart cities, and the initiatives launched by large companies, around the globe.

Smart cities have a number of challenges to overcome. These challenges are in multiple domains, and include technical, social and administration challenges. Smart cities need to be highly interconnected and accessible to be able to provide citizens with the various values they promise. They are, therefore, a desirable target for hackers, and are vulnerable in a number of ways. Hardware vulnerabilities can pose security threats in a smart city environment. Some of these vulnerabilities are due to the fact that IoT devices are not made with security in mind. Sources of vulnerabilities include operating systems, software, websites, mobile apps and human error.

A smart city is not only able to create efficiency in our cities, it can also save lives, by, for example,  dealing with disasters and situations like the COVID-19 much more efficiently. As the population of the world grows, the efficient use of resources will become increasingly important; because smart cities are capable of doing this, they are becoming a necessity. Smart cities are therefore important in today’s world, and they deserve to be the focus of a Special Issue of their own. This Issue is devoted to the topic of ‘’Cybersecurity and Privacy in Smart Cities’’, as this is one of the main challenges of smart cities.

Dr. Hossein Sarrafzadeh
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.