Security and Privacy of Smart Waste Management Systems: A Cyber-Physical System Perspective

Smart Waste Management Systems (SWMSs) represent a fundamental technology to efficiently manage the waste management and disposal process. Indeed, they provide means to efficiently manage the collection process, to optimize resources, and foster the adoption of recycling policies. These systems are increasingly more connected and equipped with communication and sensing capabilities. Currently, the research on SWMSs security only focuses on the communication part. However, SWMSs may be subject to different cyber-physical threats due to the interconnection of information and operational technologies. In this paper, we investigate the security and privacy issues of SWMSs from a cyber-physical system perspective. To provide a clear understanding of the possible threats, we first provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art on SWMSs implementations. We then review the attacks and security measures proposed in the literature, showing that they solely focus on communication technologies. Then, we provide a thorough overview of all possible cyber-physical threats towards SWMSs. Our analysis shows SWMSs are still vulnerable to a large number of threats impacting both the system’s and the users’ security, privacy, and safety.