Cybersecurity Perspectives for Smart Building Automation Systems

As the built environment becomes the hallmark of urbanisation tendencies worldwide, people have come to rely on buildings for a large majority of their daily activities. Modern buildings are equipped with new sensor technologies and advanced controllers, integrated through communication interfaces and application software to handle various required functions through automation. This is partially extended to legacy buildings through retrofitting. Integration of these new technologies opens up the automation system of the building to internal and external attackers. The challenges related to cybersecurity identified are partially similar to the industrial control system domain while adding specific constraints for the built environment as compared to a production/manufacturing environment, which relate to human safety, security and privacy aspects. We provide a critical overview of cybersecurity challenges for smart building automation systems by focusing on key areas of development at the device, system and communication and interoperability levels. A representative example for BACnet protocol features and tools is provided.

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