The growth of cities continues to be a global megatrend. With growing numbers of people living in urban areas and growing strains on urban services and infrastructure, technologies are increasingly explored and used to make city life more efficient and comfortable. Therefore, so called “Smart Cities” possess complex IT-structures and cyber-physical systems such as sensor and actuator networks for the population at large and are developing all over the world. However, this also implies great cyber-physical interdependencies. Securing smart cities’ IT systems against attacks and guaranteeing reliable and resilient services for its citizens, as well as privacy and data security are central and complex concerns. Security concerns are aggravated in smart cities due to the large and complex attack surfaces that they pose on the one hand and the grave impacts that an attack can have on the many urban citizens.

With its projects interlinking governance, dependable infrastructures and city stakeholders, SecUrban helps secure smart urban infrastructures against attacks. The core idea is a paradigm shift towards resilience and sustainable security, which users and policy makers can understand and react to. In close cooperation with the Digitalstadt (“Digital City”) Darmstadt, the LOEWE Centre emergenCITY and other ATHENE missions, SecUrbanprovide secure and reliable ICT for critical cyber-physical interdependencies and develops understandable and actionable security solutions that help to understand, react to and prevent security attacks in urban settings.