Critical Infrastructure Security

The security of critical infrastructure such as highways, bridges, dams, utilities and government buildings is critical to public safety as well as continuous access to services. When critical infrastructure security and safety is compromised, residents and businesses may lose access to clean water, transportation, communications, goods and services, and many other essentials.

Yet despite the importance of this task, cities have been challenged to deliver the kind of continuous monitoring required to ensure critical infrastructure security and safety, as the cost of dispatching city employees to constantly assess infrastructure is enormous. Consequently, cities everywhere are turning to smart city innovations for more effective and cost-efficient monitoring technology, helping to ensure critical infrastructure security at a more reasonable cost.

Smart city technologies use data collected from a vast number of IoT-enabled sensors to provide real-time information about everything from traffic and street lights to the electrical grid and waste management to online permitting, smart kiosks and other digital government services.

Smart city innovations for critical infrastructure security may include technology such as:

• Sensors placed on bridges, power plants and dams to monitor stress on aging infrastructure and identify potential dangers.
• Video surveillance positioned at utilities, water treatment plants and government buildings to monitor security.
• Drone monitoring to inspect structures, highways, power lines, cell towers, railroad tracks and other for critical infrastructure damage and deterioration.

Benefits for critical infrastructure security

With smart technology designed to protect critical infrastructure security, cities can:

• Reduce costs. By using inexpensive sensors and drones to gather data rather than requiring costly visual inspections by city personnel, cities can dramatically reduce the cost of monitoring critical infrastructure security.
• Increase safety and security. By enabling more expansive and continuous monitoring – rather than limited and sporadic monitoring – smart technologies allow cities to achieve higher levels of critical infrastructure security and safety.
• Respond to disasters. The technology used to monitor critical infrastructure security can also be repurposed to help with disaster recovery efforts following tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and other emergency events.

Critical infrastructure security requires high-speed connectivity

Monitoring critical infrastructure security with smart city technologies requires several layers of leading-edge technology:

• Thousands of sensors, cameras and other IoT-enabled devices continuously collect data from essential infrastructure.
• High-speed Internet connections receive data from sensors and transmit it to an IoT analytics platform.
• Powerful analytics software combines, processes and distills vast amount of streaming data into actionable intelligence.
• Interfaces such as dashboards, signage, apps and reports provide city officials with ways to receive and interact with data about critical infrastructure security.

Spectrum Enterprise, a leading provider of connectivity solutions to enterprises nationwide, is a trusted partner for the high-speed connectivity required for smart city technologies. Spectrum has built a wholly owned, nationwide fiber network that spans 840,000 miles, and is investing another $25 billion by 2021 to bring high-speed connectivity to even more communities.

To support the requirements of digital government and smart city technologies for monitoring critical infrastructure security, Spectrum Enterprise provides:

• Symmetrical connection speeds up to 100 Gbps for local governments and large enterprises.
• Connection speeds up to 1 Gbps for homes and businesses.
• WiFi connection speeds that will soon enable connectivity at 1 Gbps, thanks to 5G and 802.11ax technologies at more than 350,000 Spectrum Enterprise WiFi hotspots nationwide.
• Cellular connectivity through one of the nation’s largest LTE cellular networks.

Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.