What Security Issues Do 5G Network Providers Need To Address?

The global economy is set to experience a new and improved network technology, with 5G becoming its core element. However, as attractive as 5G is, some of its attractive features, like shared infrastructure, are also security risks. While the 5G network has many advantages, organizations must assess their risks and protect their data and network accordingly. 

5G can increase the number of entry points and available services, giving more room for threats. An attack against 5G networks may have very serious and catastrophic impacts. This article discusses some of the like security issues of the 5G network and how to handle them. 

How 5G Differs Fom 4G

While there are several improvements that 5G has over 4G, network density and deployment speed stand out. The deployment speed of the 5G network is more significant than 4G, with the potential to reach 10gigabits per second. This makes it 100x faster than 4G deployment speed. 

The network density for 5G is 10x higher than 4G. While 4G can only have 100,000 devices operating simultaneously per square kilometer, 5G allows up to 1,000,000 devices within the same zone. This gives more room for IoT proliferation. However, this comes with its security risks, as it opens more entry points for cyber attackers. 

5G Security Challenges

5G works mainly through the carriers, so organizations need to trust their 5G carriers to do things right. This creates more trust for carriers that organizations must understand and believe are capable of managing information resource risks. 

5G is a more complex network technology than 4G and other cellular technologies, and its complexity can be a security problem. It’s believed to use more technology components, making it more difficult to implement and manage because these components significantly increase the attack surface. 

Similar to other product or service offerings, there’s the risk of attack on supply chains. These risks include unintentional or malicious malware introduction, insecure designs, counterfeit components, and infected firmware. A supply chain attack is common, but it’ll only get worse with more devices connecting to the 5G network as it continues its rapid expansion. 

The absence of 5G standards is an additional challenge for the supply chain. Although work is ongoing to create these standards, it’s still a long way off. This is a problem for organizations using this technology because when there are no standards, it’s difficult to determine what’s needed and if the vendors or carriers comply with the best practices.

Interoperability of the 5G network is crucial because several current technologies were not created with the 5G networks in mind. So, it must be able to accommodate these technologies so they don’t become redundant.

 With a 5G network enabling IoT to be better implemented, botnet operators also have more opportunities to increase. According to a Statista report, the estimated number of IoT devices connected by 2025 is around 75 billion. This is a 45 billion increase from the 30 billion connected devices in 2020. Organizations must have more visibility in IoT devices that connect to their network to ensure that their network is secure than built-in security controls.

Another security challenge in using the 5G network is the lack of training. Generally, IT teams and their security counterparts are still being prepared for the vulnerabilities of the net 5G network because of the newness of the components that make up the 5G network foundation. 

How To Handle 5G Network Security Issues

The first step to potentially handle these issues is for infrastructure and security teams to understand the effect of the 5G network on local and remote access. These teams must be trained appropriately and understand the steps vendors and carriers take to ensure their service configuration is correct. Internal teams must also understand how to interface with connected 5G networks securely. This training is necessary to develop guidelines and organizational standards for the 5G service. The standards should also address the safe interface of these services with existing infrastructure. 

Secondly, organizations should see their carriers' deployment process and internal security. Transparency is an important attribute expected from cloud service providers. So device vendors and carriers must also be open and transparent. This ensures that organizations can create procedures and policies that help them assess the degree of foundational trust. It also needs periodic assessments over time. Organizations can also move towards software-define networking and virtualization due to the more complex and expanded attack surface.

With a Software-Define Network (SDN), organizations can easily apply their security policies across different environments. This improves the response time in case a vulnerability emerges on their attack surface. When a large organization deploys 5G, managing different physical devices will no longer be easy. 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning infused with threat intelligence also work similarly to the SDN. There will be an increase in the correlated and aggregated number of logs, which will increase the number of alerts. However, when managing many connected devices, AI alert triage will prioritize and sort out potential incidents. 

Lastly, organizations need to move to Zero Trust (ZTN) before they move to 5G. this helps to reduce security risk across different areas. The ZTN network approach restricts the access of machines and users to some parts of the networks to specific tasks, thereby reducing the risk of intrusion.

Organizations may not necessarily move their whole infrastructure at once, but they can implement zero-trust across each segment by moving high-risk resources to the network segments.

Interfaces between 5G and internal networks should also use a zero-trust approach. This is also true for an organization that ensures its cloud service providers properly manage their 5G interface.

In Conclusion

5G will change how information is collected, managed, and distributed. However, it’ll also ensure that network-connected devices increase and expand the attack surface for organizations. So, it’s important to understand the security challenges of the 5G network as technology usage increases. 

Charlie Svensson is a freelance writer specializing in IT and provides student assignment help online with Assignment Helper

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