Our client is an energy company that provides public lighting for safe, secure and attractive public areas. Community streetlights are often taken for granted, but they are crucially important utilities for our communities. Streetlights are relied upon for pedestrians and vehicles, street crime prevention and the overall illumination of amenities in community spaces. These all need to be managed effectively through secure technology.
The client maintains and manages operations for a significant number of streetlights for dozens of local government councils across vast, diverse areas of Australia. This provider implements initiatives such as smart controllers for light levels and faster identification and fixing of faults. They keep the lights on for communities
Managing so many customers, with thousands of streetlights under their jurisdictions, is no easy feat. The public lighting provider wanted to allow more effective visibility and management through technology to simplify and empower the management and operations of all of the councils that use their streetlights by integrating them into one powerful yet easy-to-operate application.
However, integrating so many customers and their streetlights could become a significant security concern, and a strong focus on the cybersecurity of the underpinning technology would need careful, experienced delivery to ensure only authorised access was permitted for their customers.
The energy provider brought in MakeSense, equipped with world-class technology backed up by local experience in secure integration transformation projects. They reviewed the problem and formulated a solution that would significantly benefit this client and their customers.
MakeSense identified the security risks associated with the proposed integration project. They knew that access given to the wrong people could cause far-reaching impacts unless the correct authentication and cyber security measures were implemented from the outset. This public lighting application would have been vulnerable to bot attacks and potential fake fault reports from unauthorised users. This was a technical problem with serious, real-world implications for the safety and welfare of the communities served.
MakeSense used its proven track record of secure API-based projects to provide an expert solution. MakeSense rescued the effectiveness of this application by informing their client about the crucial cyber vulnerabilities and then providing a comprehensive solution.
The customer and their clients can successfully utilise an API-driven single-page portal application to manage and monitor all their streetlight data and operations from a single source. They can now achieve repairs and maintenance far more efficiently through this integrated process.
Underpinning this transformational application are considerable cybersecurity measures, including tokenised authentication via a proxy IP and re-validation via Google Captcha to mitigate the threat of bot-based cyber breaches.
Ultimately, MakeSense delivered a solution that appeals to the energy provider’s preferences and goals while also achieving the overlooked security necessities for this application.
This has significantly contributed to greater reliability, security, safety and enjoyability of many of Australia’s illuminated public places.
