UK testbeds and 5GIC publish 5G security report

A report that has been produced by three of the UK’s 5G Testbed and Trials programme’s six 5G testbeds and the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre has made a number of security recommendations that if acted upon could help protect the UK’s future vital infrastructure.

The authors believe the UK needs to innovate to create a new way to predict and pre-validate 5G network connections, leveraging mobile AI based autonomous network technologies – from mobile phones and smart industrial machines, to health monitoring devices and smart home consumer devices. The networks need to quickly and efficiently recognise these devices and confirm that they are secure without compromising user experience and performance. The paper also recommends:

The report also states that “Risk assessments against a set of criteria/principles must be performed ahead of the roll-out of key 5G milestones, such as a 3GPP Release 16 compliant system. This will help determine next steps and strategies for each risk factor. Based on the findings from trials and tests, advice for businesses and operators investing in DevOps or application development on how to approach risk decisions could follow, further improving system security. Furthermore, by providing advice, operators and administrators would be providing a description of the lowest-bar of entry on the network. This would not only assist operators in ensuring some basic security controls are in place but also aid 5G network monitoring for ‘non-conformist’ or ‘mischievous’ deployed software.”