The 2021 IEEE 5G World Forum (5GWF 21) is held as virtual event under the title “Future Networks: A Comprehensive Look at 5G and Beyond”. It aims to bring experts from industry, academia, and research to exchange their visions and achievements towards 5G and beyond networks and encourage innovative cross-domain studies, research, early deployment and large-scale pilot showcases that address the challenges of future networks.
Summer 2021
5G has further increased the importance of cybersecurity. While network security has already been of high importance, the new usage scenarios enabled by 5G have dramatically increased the stakes. Just think of automated driving and IoT applications in factories, and it becomes clear that network security has become not only a central topic for the ICT domain, but for economy and society as a whole.
In this issue of Eurescom message, we explore what is done in Europe to advance security and trust in 5G and beyond. We present selected research and innovation projects that have contributed to novel solutions for making 5G and future 6G networks more secure.
Accountability and Liability for 5G and Beyond
INSPIRE-5Gplus workshop
On 16th June 2021, the INSPIRE-5Gplus project held a full-day online workshop on accountability and liability for 5G and beyond. It brought together more than 30 researchers and practitioners from several domains, including actuaries, lawyers, and researchers in networking and multi-agent systems. They presented challenges and approaches for liability management in multi-party 5G ecosystems and digital services, with a forward-looking perspective on Beyond 5G systems.
The main purpose of the workshop was to share, compare and disseminate best practices, approaches, tools and methodologies for identifying, formulating, and managing liability in 5G systems. The workshop addressed crucial topics such as formalization of commitments and obligations, contractualization, monitoring & supervision, evidence collection & analysis at runtime, as well as post-mortem evidence collection & forensics for identifying liabilities in case of disasters, security incidents, or regulation violations.
The workshop moderated by Gürkan Gür from Zurich University of Applied Sciences started in the morning with presentations by INSPIRE-5Gplus partners, covering topics from the Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) standard and Liability-Aware Security Management (LASM) to Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
This was followed by presentations covering a variety of multi-disciplinary aspects. Sylvie Jonas from AGIL’IT Law explained how liability management based on contracts works in a 5G environment. Carmen Fernandez Gago from University of Málaga talked about accountability in the cloud. And Samia Bouzefrane from the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (Cnam), France presented a trust-based recommendation system.
In the afternoon session, Jacques Kruse-Brandao from SGS presented challenges, approaches and concepts for 5G device security certification. Arthur Van Der Wees from Arthur’s Legal talked about trustworthy and accountable digital ecosystems. And Claire Loiseaux from Internet of Trust presented responsibilities and certification in cybersecurity space.
A round-table discussion with the speakers, moderated by Gürkan Gür, concluded the workshop. The panel discussed questions like: What is the major challenge for multi-party liability management? Who has to manage liability between parties? And what would be nice to have for multi-party liability management? While the speakers provided knowledgeable answers to these questions, many aspects of liability management require still plenty of research and multi-disciplinary discussion. In view of the growing economic and societal importance of 5G applications and services, finding technical, regulatory, and legal solutions for the topics highlighted at the workshop will be of high importance for the success of 5G and 6G.
Further information
Workshop page – https://www.5g-eve.eu/event/final-5g-eve-webinar-validation-platform-achievements-and-multi-site-use-case-deployment/
Security threats and strategies for 5G and Beyond
The changing threat landscape has impacts on security and trust of current and future networks in Europe and worldwide. Eurescom message editor-in-chief Milon Gupta asked three cybersecurity experts from ENISA, the EU Agency for Cybersecurity, about the status, trends and strategies to deal with security threats: Goran Milenkovic is cybersecurity expert in the Policy Development and Implementation unit of ENISA, and he is primarily responsible for the telecom sector and for 5G security; Marnix Dekker leads the work of the Agency in the area of telecom security, cybersecurity breach reporting, and the security of cloud and digital infrastructure under the NIS Directive; and Apostolos Malatras, is Team Leader of ENISA’s Knowledge and Information Team, in charge of the cybersecurity of emerging technologies, threat landscapes and foresight.
Continue readingA holistic security vision for 5G & Beyond networks
The recently arrived 5G architectures will enable a plethora of services and applications never imagined some time ago. However, its complex network infrastructure is prone to suffer cybersecurity attacks that must be tackled in order to ensure users’ privacy and security. In this line, the Horizon-2020-funded INSPIRE-5Gplus project aims at progressing the security vision of 5G & beyond systems by designing and developing a smart, trustworthy and liability-aware security platform for these kinds of systems. To this end, state-of-the-art technologies such as Zero-Touch Network & Service Management (ZSM), Software Defined Security (SD-SEC) modes, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based techniques, and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) are being adopted to provide a security aware architecture and its associated closed-loop of security functions.
Continue readingSecurity and Trust in 5G and Beyond
While network security has always been important as a means to protect the physical infrastructure, and the data and content flowing though the network, it is gaining increased attention in the course of 5G and beyond 5G networks, because networks become deeply rooted in our society in the business, governmental and private spaces.
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