DUBAI // Dubai is taking steps to ensure its move to a smart city is protected from cyber attacks, a police official said on Sunday.
Col Khalid Alrazooqi, director general of smart services, said police were working on an open data policy to categorise information as public or private.
“This will be launched in June,” he said at the Safe Cities Briefing Conference. “The main objective is to maintain the integrity of intellectual property and sensitive data. Part of a smart city is open data which will be provided to the private sector and the public, so we have to think of categorising this data – which of it will be open to the public, and how to secure it.”
He said cyber security policies varied through the world.
“In the end, we want to make sure all our infrastructure is reliable and secure,” he said.
“In the future, with all the wi-fi and sensors across the city, one attack can cause the whole city to go down, so we have to be very careful before implementing any service.”
With more than 205 nationalities in Dubai and a 67 per cent increase in new types of malware on smart phones, protection measures are essential.
“Security is the most important pillar,” said Col Alrazooqi. “In the future, we will provide a robot [automatic customer service kiosk] in all shopping malls and at tourist attractions, so people can interact directly with the system.”
The emirate has 550 mobile cameras on police cars, connected to the operations room.
“Dubai has a project to connect all government sectors with wi-fi,” he said. “But we shouldn’t forget the security aspect so we’re working on solving such issues. We have 110 cameras which can detect the plate of wanted cars, 10 new cameras that can detect 360 degrees of traffic around the police car, and 650 external CCTV cameras installed in Dubai and connected to all malls and hotels. We are connected to another 128 CCTV with the Roads and Transport Authority, and there are 6,299 cameras installed in malls.”
Bassam Almaharmeh, chief information security officer at the Jordanian ministry of defence, said: “In 2050, 70 to 75 per cent of the world’s population will be living in cities. We have about 16 billion connected devices to the internet and it is growing to 50 billion by 2020. This generates a lot of raw data so it is obvious that data will be the gold of this era.”
Dr Amirudin Wahab, chief executive of cyber security at the ministry of science, technology and innovation in Malaysia, said the oil and gas industry had to be wary against attacks but there was a shortage of information security professionals.
“If you don’t have the expertise, you may not know how to protect your infrastructure and that’s when all the vulnerabilities come in,” he said.
cmalek@thenational.ae
