„Smart City” has been a trendy buzzphrase used by politicians, city planners, and tech companies for over a decade now — but their shiny promises gloss over dangerous realities. Downtime and damages in municipalities due to cyberattacks regularly make the news, but we focus primarily on securing and recovering IT systems. Smart Cities by nature use a combination of IT and OT systems, but have no established or holistic approach for managing overlapping risks to both. The consequences to security from varied stakeholders involved in Smart City planning and implementation go unexamined. Human hazards, vulnerable devices, and data management issues build on these to create diverse and creative attack paths for all sorts of threat actors.

The talk sheds light on the complex interplay of humans and technology in cybersecurity. It provides insights into the relevance of the human factor in cybersecurity and explains why it is not sufficient to make cybersecurity technologies usable to enhance security. Rather than independent system components or even “enemies”, humans and technology should be considered as a team. Augmenting each other’s strengths can enhance resilience, i.e., the ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances – which is crucial in uncertain times.