Joint Guidance: Cyber security best practices for smart cities

New Zealand’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued a joint guide in partnership with the United States of America's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA(external link)), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI(external link)), the National Security Agency (NSA(external link)), and the cyber security authorities of Australia(external link), Canada(external link), and the United Kingdom(external link).

This joint guidance, titled Cybersecurity Best Practices for Smart Cities, acknowledges that communities may seek cost-saving and quality-of-life improvements through digital transformation of infrastructure to create “smart cities”. The guidance provides recommendations to balance efficiency and innovation with cyber security, privacy protections, and national security.

In this context, “smart cities” refers to communities that integrate information and communication technologies (ICT), community-wide data, and intelligent solutions to digitally transform infrastructure and optimise governance in response to citizens’ needs, and connect the operational technology (OT) managing physical infrastructure with networks and applications that collect and analyse data using ICT components such as internet of things (IoT) devices, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G.

This guidance encourages organisations to implement these best practices in alignment with their specific cyber security requirements to ensure the safe and secure operation of infrastructure systems, protection of citizens' private data, and security of sensitive government and business data.

For queries related to this guidance, please contact: info@ncsc.govt.nz