Conceptual Model of Key Aspects of Security and Privacy Protection in a Smart City in Slovakia

Abstract

The output of this work is a comprehensive overview of a wide range of key aspects of security and privacy relevant for the development of smart cities in Slovakia. The work incorporates heterogeneous and complex findings into a corpus of simplified evidence. By employing a systematic review method, this study first outlines key characteristics of a smart city, and then proceeds to summarise opportunities and challenges for conceptualising a model of a smart city in Slovakia. The development of a classification with respect to the different smart city domains, systems and potential threats aims to highlight universally applicable aspects. In order to provide an overview, the paper also presents specific requirements, options, problems, and factors taking into account Slovak policies. This work is based on the proposition that a sustainable and prosperous conceptual model of a smart city is not only linked with technological artefacts and communication infrastructure that enable intelligent management of various governance resources, but is especially tied to the norms, policies, and standards that ensure security and privacy for smart city residents, as their presence and trust in the whole ecosystem is essential for the generation, collection, processing, storage, dissemination, and use of data by respectful technologies. A secure smart city is a cross-disciplinary dilemma, a universal technological challenge built upon context-based policies, standards and procedures. The output of this work is an identification of smart city domains that can become subject to attacks and a stipulation of security requirements that are needed to assure domain functionality. Maintaining meaningful human control as a requirement to mitigate influence activities as well as protect and ensure residential engagement in a smart city was identified and added to the results of the review. Simple communication was highlighted as an effective countermeasure. Applicability of the smart city concept in Slovakia is particularly vulnerable due to the slow pace of implementation and fragmentation of relevant legislation, short development cycle of new techniques of attack, and the lack of expertise and low level of user awareness.