Recent Trends on Smart City Security: A Comprehensive Overview

Abstract

The expansion of smart cities drives the growth of data generated from sensor devices, benefitting citizens with enhanced governance, intelligent decision-making, optimized and sustainable management of available resources. The exposure of user data during its collection from sensors, storage in databases, and processing by artificial intelligence-based solutions presents significant security and privacy challenges. In this paper, we investigate the various threats and attacks affecting the growth of future smart cities and discuss the available countermeasures using artificial intelligence and blockchain-based solutions. Open challenges in existing literature due to the lack of countermeasures against quantum-inspired attacks are discussed, focusing on post -quantum security solutions for resource-constrained sensor devices. Additionally, we discuss future research and challenges for the growing smart city environment and suggest possible solutions.