Find out how AI helps with cybersecurity for the smart city

Cybersecurity remains top of mind for city leaders worldwide as they consider how technology can help improve their communities. Excited as they are about the transformative potential of generative AI, cities need to feel confident that their critical systems and data are protected against a ransomware attack or other devastating cybercrime before undertaking serious innovation.

This was the overriding message we heard in our many meetings and conversations with city leaders at Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) 2024, a phenomenal 3-day event in Barcelona, Spain, where government officials, business leaders, and urban planners gathered to showcase and discuss innovative solutions for connected and sustainable urban development.

At Microsoft for Government, we share city leaders' concerns about security, which is a foundational aspect of our approach to empowering cities to build inclusive programs and enable thriving communities. And the good news is that AI is not only a benefit that is unlocked by strong cybersecurity, but it also plays a key role in helping cities to counter the escalating threat of modern cyberattacks.

As cybercrime escalates, cities are prime targets

The scale, scope, and sophistication of cybercrime has grown dramatically in the past decade, and the escalation shows no signs of letting up. For example, in the past three years, the number of cyberattacks aiming to exploit weaknesses in password security has exploded from 579 per second to more than 7,000, nearly doubling in the last year alone.¹

Threat actors from hostile nation-states and criminal organizations are relentless in their attacks, driven by motives including financial gain, intelligence gathering, and disruption. Governments are among the top three targeted sectors worldwide, and local and national organizations struggle to defend against increasingly effective ransomware, phishing, and fraud attacks. Adversaries who are highly motivated and well-funded hold a significant asymmetrical advantage over a typical city government organization, for whom cyber security is just one serious concern among many.

As the threat landscape worsens, the cybersecurity playing field tilts more to the advantage of the attackers-for several reasons.

First, city governments often carry a significant "technical debt," in the form of legacy software and systems. These aging assets typically handle core IT tasks and are stretched well beyond their original design intent due to budget constraints and other factors. Many are rife with security vulnerabilities that are difficult to patch or effectively secure.

Adding to the challenge is the difficulty of recruiting and retaining strong cybersecurity professionals. The world is facing a growing cybersecurity talent shortage (the global workforce gap stands at 4.8 million, up 19% in the past year),² and the staff who are in place are often constrained by relatively slower, disconnected tools and systems, which are often no match for modern attackers.

Meet the challenge with a modern cyber defense strategy

Fortunately, cities now have new options to dramatically improve their security postures. Modernizing IT with customized cloud and hybrid solutions doesn't just offer the critical benefits of scale, agility, and cost-effectiveness that cities need for innovation. It also enables new cybersecurity approaches that leverage the advanced capabilities of the cloud to protect the network, manage access and identities, and critically meet cyber attackers head-on using advanced AI tools.

To achieve optimal cybersecurity, we advise a strategy built on Zero Trust -a security model that assumes that no user or device is trusted by default. Achieving Zero Trust delivers a robust security posture in which every cornerstone of modern cyber defense is in place-continuous identity verification, updated endpoint security, encryption, event logging, and more. With these, automation can then be used to quickly respond to and mitigate security incidents and reduce the time attackers have to exploit vulnerabilities. This is where AI makes all the difference.

Cyber defense is a game of scope and speed. The greater the scope of network data you have, the better your chances of identifying suspicious activities. And the faster you spot an issue, the less damage it can potentially cause. Humans tend to be very bad at analyzing large amounts of data at super high speed, but AI is built for it.

And now, just seven months after its general availability, Microsoft Security Copilot is helping to further tip the scale back to the side of the defenders.

Microsoft Security Copilot-the game changer for cyber defense

Security Copilot is built to enhance a broad range of security operations across identities, devices, data, and workloads. By synthesizing global threat intelligence, best practices, and a city's own data, it can deliver actionable insights that help teams counter sophisticated attacks faster and with less impact.

Security Copilot helps cybersecurity professionals handle an incredible range of day-to-day challenges with dramatic results. For example, new research from Microsoft shows that organizations that adopted Security Copilot saw a 30% reduction in the time required to detect, respond to, and resolve security incidents (known as mean time to resolution, or MTTR), a major benefit in a world where analysts spend an average of 2.7 hours a day resolving incidents.³

Also, thanks to its generative AI and natural language capabilities, Security Copilot helps ease the staffing challenge by helping admins and security analysts to work "above their pay grade" with tools and guidance that empower them to handle tasks typically reserved for more experienced professionals. Security Copilot integrates with Microsoft's main security products, including Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview, and it can also work seamlessly with third-party services like Red Canary and Jamf.

See how advanced threat protection helps secure public sector organizations worldwide:

Partner with us to build your unique city cybersecurity strategy

Modern cyber defense is a team sport that incorporates a city's leadership, security professionals, broader workforce, and even its citizens. There is no single roadmap for success, but there are some essentials, among them a long-term commitment to security and partnership.

At Microsoft, we regard security as our top corporate priority. This was reinforced emphatically at Microsoft Ignite 2024, where we shared new insights on our Secure Future Initiative , to which we've dedicated the equivalent of 34,000 full-time engineers. Also announced was the general availability of Microsoft Security Exposure Management, which dynamically maps changing relationships between critical assets such as devices, data, identities, and other connections.

These types of advances are only as valuable as the partnership a city builds with its technology and solution providers. That is why we work closely with city government organizations and our global partner ecosystem to build solutions and strategies that are tailored to meet each city's unique needs. This helps customers like the City of Lokeren in Belgium, who built a modern cyber defense strategy for their hybrid cloud environment based on the Microsoft Security stack, the Government of Albania, which limited damage in the face of a sophisticated nation-state cyberattack, and the Dominican Republic's National Cybersecurity Center (Centro Nacional de Ciberseguridad, CNCS), who built a customized cybersecurity strategy based on Azure and Dynamics 365.

We view security as a foundational, long-term commitment, and we would be delighted to partner with you to develop a cybersecurity strategy that meets your city's unique needs.

Learn more

¹ Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024.

² ICS2, "Growth of Cybersecurity Workforce Slows in 2024 as Economic Uncertainty Persists," September 2024.

³ Microsoft, "Generative AI and Security Operations Center Productivity: Evidence from Live Operations," November, 2024.

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