One of the latest trends in the ICT world is to embed smart objects in cities, aiming to make them “smart”. Many cities around the world have already a strategy for applying “smart city” concepts with the inclusion of technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT), others are in the process of drafting a strategy for this. The goal is to infuse “intelligent” behaviour in municipal environments, mainly for improving the services that are provided to the citizens and to improve efficiency. Already a multitude of devices in many cities are connected to the IoT and there are various projections about billions of devices that will be connected to the Internet in the near future.
However, if IoT technologies are not designed and applied in a secure and safe way, they can be vulnerable to many types of attacks, which can cause serious problems in the physical world. Since IoT devices are not only monitoring (e.g., through sensors) but also controlling physical objects (e.g., through actuators), the impact of security attacks can be devastating, including serious safety impacts as in the case of connected vehicles and smart healthcare. Thus, the IoT brings new challenges regarding security, privacy and mainly “trust” in order to protect the safety of the citizens in smart city environments. Since IoT devices are monitoring the physical world, they can be monitoring citizens and their behaviour too. Having a large numbers of devices installed in, e.g., homes, offices, busses, and on the streets, that monitor everyday activities of citizens raises issues regarding the privacy of the citizens and the access to sensitive information.
This workshop to bring together experts from different EU projects and the Internet of Things Research Cluster (IERC) that are working in crosslayer issues in the areas of user-centric security, privacy and trust in the IoT. The goal is to present the recent results to the research community, the industry and standardisation bodies and exchange ideas for joint research activities in the future. Finally, the threats of the IoT for the citizens will be identified analysed, discussing also how the results of the projects can help mitigating these threats.