Research Proposal: Security Threats in Emerging Smart Cities

This PhD project proposal investigates the security threats, vulnerabilities, and issues in emerging smart cities. It analyzes low, intermediate, and high-level security concerns and defines current technologies implemented to address these challenges, such as AnBx, AIF frameworks, and resilience indicators. The research aims to develop a secure framework integrating blockchain technology and information technology in smart devices to ensure secure communication. Research methods include Internet of Things (IoT) protocols, information and communication technologies, resilience indicators, cloud computing, P2P technologies, and tools for security protocol verification. The proposal outlines a three-year plan to analyze upcoming security issues and enhance the security of smart cities, focusing on communication-related security issues using IoT and security protocol-based technology. The document concludes with a list of references used for the research.

Ph.D. Project Proposal
Title Investigate Security Threats, Vulnerabilities and security issues in
emerging smart cities
Literature survey: This research work is present to investigate the security threats, security issues,
and vulnerabilities in emerging smart cities. The current security issues & threats and vulnerabilities
that are facing in the smart cities as the signature identification, agent identification going more
complex, does not provide proper confidentiality for transmission the messages and secure
communication in vehicles, and other issues that are based on the smart cities that being deployed
and developed without security attention. To resolve these security issues, threats and
vulnerabilities various technologies are used by researchers. The current technologies that are used
AnBx which is a tool for security protocols, AIF framework that is based on the novel set abstraction
technology to resolve the security issue (certificate authority) and it automatically analyses the
previous approaches. The resilience indicators are also implemented with its six levels. With these
indicators, it resolves the security issues. To investigate the social aspects, sensitive data, and smart
devices and vehicle-related issues, the Information and communication technologies are
implemented. The IoT is mainly used by the researchers to resolve the security issues in the smart
cities. In our research work, focuses on the security threats, vulnerabilities and security issues in the
emerging smart cities.
Aim and Research Questions:
Aim: The main aim of this research work is to investigate the security issues, threats, and
vulnerabilities in emerging smart cities by using security protocol based technology and IoT related
technologies.
Research Questions:
1. Analyse the low level and intermediate and high-level security issues, threats, and
vulnerabilities in smart cities.
2. Define the current technologies that are implemented for security issues & threats.
3. What are benefits of these technologies for this research work?
4. How are these technologies implemented to investigate the security issues, threats, and
vulnerabilities in smart cities?
5. Provide result or outcomes of implementing the technologies?
6. Future Scope related to this research work.
Research Objectives:
1. To analyze the security issues, threats, and vulnerabilities in emerging smart cities.
2. To analyze the technologies for investigating them and resolve them.
3. Provide a secure framework by integrating the Blockchain technology and information
technology in smart devices with secure communication.
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The statement about the new research work:
These researchers propose a security framework for integrating the blockchain technology and
information technology to smart devices with providing a secure communication and resolve the
security threats and issues in the smart city.
Research Methods:
1. Internet of Things (Blockchain technology, parametric analysis, and IoT protocols)
2. Information and communication technologies
3. Resilience Indicators
4. Cloud computing technologies
5. P2P technologies
6. Automatic Generation and verification for implementation of security protocol (AnBx tool)
7. AIF framework (based on Novel set abstraction technology)
8. VIRTUS middleware (for authentication and encryption)
Outline plan for upcoming three years:
With this research work, the current issues and upcoming issues of security are resolved and it can
be helpful to make smart cities more secure. Mainly researchers are implementing IoT based
technologies to investigate the security issues and threats and vulnerabilities. In upcoming three
years, we will analyze the upcoming security issues, threats, and vulnerabilities in emerging smart
cities. Communication-related security issues will be investigated by using IoT based technologies
and security protocol based technology. With this research work, the security goals will be achieved
for emerging smart cities. In today’s environment, if we check that the smart devices are incapable
and insecure to defending, so, in upcoming three years, we can reduce this insecurity and
incapability. This research outlines and identifies for three years to provide efficient, reliable and
scalable solutions for emerging smart cities from security issues and threats and vulnerabilities.
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Referencing
 Bugliesi, Michele, Calzavara, Stefano, Mödersheim, Sebastian and Modesti, Paolo (2016)
Security Protocol Specification and Verification with AnBx. Journal of Information Security
and Applications, 30. pp. 46-63. ISSN 2214-2126
 Biswas, Kamanashis, Muthukkumarasamy, Vallipuram (2017) Securing Smart Cities Using
Blockchain Technology. In High Performance Computing and Communications; IEEE 14th
International Conference on Smart City; IEEE 2nd International Conference on Data Science
and Systems (HPCC/SmartCity/DSS), pp. 1392-1393. DOI: 10.1109/HPCC-SmartCity-
DSS.2016.0198
 Sharma, Geeta, Kalra, Sheetal (2017) A secure remote user authentication scheme for
smart cities e-governance applications. Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments,
Volume 3, pp 177–188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40860-017-0046-x
 Zhou, Wei., Zhang, Yuqing. and Liu, Peng (2018). The Effect of IoT New Features on Security
and Privacy: New Threats, Existing Solutions, and Challenges Yet to Be Solved. arXiv preprint
arXiv:1802.03110.
 Zhang, Kuan, Ni, Jianbing, Yang, Kan, Liang, Xiaohui, Ren, Ju and Shen, Xuemi Sherman
(2017) Security and privacy in smart city applications: Challenges and solutions. IEEE
Communications Magazine, 55(1), pp.122-129. ISSN: 0163-6804
 Jovanović, A, Øien, K. and Choudhary, A. (2018). An Indicator-Based Approach to Assessing
Resilience of Smart Critical Infrastructures. In Urban Disaster Resilience and Security (pp.
285-311). Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68606-6_17
 Goel, Sanjay and Hong, Yuan (2015) Security challenges in smart grid implementation.
In Smart Grid Security (pp. 1-39). Springer, London. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-
4471-6663-4_1
 Efthymiopoulos, Marios, Panagiotis (2016) Cyber-security in smart cities: the case of
Dubai. Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 5(1), p.11. DOI: https://doi-
org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1186/s13731-016-0036-x
 Modesti, Paolo (2016), October. AnBx: Automatic generation and verification of security
protocols implementations. In International Symposium on Foundations and Practice of
Security (pp. 156-173). Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30303-
1_10
 Mödersheim, Sebastian and Modesti, Paolo (2011) Verifying sevecom using set-based
abstraction. In Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2011
7th International (pp. 1164-1169). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/IWCMC.2011.5982705
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