As smart buildings increase, so does cybersecurity risk

CHICAGO, Oct. 12, 2021 – Intelligent building solutions or “smart buildings” are increasingly becoming the norm across many property types. Tenants and building owners are drawn to the ease and convenience of scheduling and programming elevator arrivals, conference room bookings, HVAC systems, and more, all through their smartphones. However, as buildings become more and more programmable from multiple users, the cybersecurity risk has also increased in lockstep.

According to a recent whitepaper between JLL’s Property Management group, Red Bison Technology Group and Fortinet, intelligent building solutions offer tremendous benefits but only if risk can be appropriately managed.

“Owners are always concerned with risk to their assets whether it be through natural disasters, or human-driven risk and rightly so,” said Jason Lund, Managing Director of JLL’s Property Management Technology Division. “Cyber risk is increasing yearly. As we technologically enable our buildings, we are also making them more hackable. We can’t leave behind the tremendous benefits of technology in buildings for the environment, cost efficiencies, safety and other uses so we must actively pursue a parallel strategy of ensuring cyber security even as we enable our buildings.” 

“Many commercial buildings currently operate with disparate systems and separate networks for every in-building technology, which increases deployment costs and limits visibility into vulnerability,” added Lynn Martin, CEO Red Bison. “A move toward a centralized or converged network as a ‘backbone’ for technology infrastructure within buildings allows building owners to monitor all systems at once with end-to-end visibility and allows for quicker identification and resolution of cybersecurity breaches.”

Cybersecurity should be placed at the forefront of building owners’ minds as we move towards a “smarter” built-world. With proper safeguards in place, the benefits of smart technology will long outweigh any negatives.

JLL’s 2,300 property management experts in the U.S. provide comprehensive real estate services in more than 1,200 buildings totaling more than 208 million square feet.

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