5G Will Require Us to Reimagine Cybersecurity

We are on the precipice of 5G, or fifth-generation wireless adoption. Many consider its development to be a technological race, one that countless organizations and countries are working to achieve.

President Donald Trump explained this movement best: The race to 5G is on, and America must win.

It doesn’t matter what country or region you’re from, just about everyone is focused on developing and upgrading wireless technologies to boost its capabilities. 5G is considered a revolutionary upgrade to mobile connectivity and wireless networks. It will push the entire technology field to new heights, affecting every industry, from manufacturing and retail to health care and finance.

To understand why it’s going to be so impactful, one must consider what it offers. It’s also crucial to determine the cybersecurity and IT risks presented by these more robust networks.

What 5G Networks Will Bring to the Table

Nearly everyone is already familiar with wireless networks, particularly those that support mobile devices and smartphones. 3G networks, or the third-generation, were mainly responsible for boosting the popularity of mobile connectivity alongside some of the most renowned handsets like the original iPhone.

4G took the technology to new levels, offering an increase in signal strength and quality, alongside bandwidth improvements. 4G LTE which is the current and most common form of wireless network available today offered even more improvements. Newer devices are more powerful and thus more capable of taking advantage of the speed and performance enhancements provided by 4G LTE. It is now possible to stream HD-quality content via mobile networks, which was something almost unheard of for 3G, at least at its current performance levels.

Even with the advancements, mobile networks still have a long way to go before they can reliably support commercial operations. It’s precisely what 5G, or the fifth generation of wireless technology, aims to do.

There are many challenges presented by the current generation, specifically regarding bandwidth and performance limitations. Imagine a vitals monitor that must phone home to a remote server via mobile networks. You’d want the wireless source to be as strong as ever and even more reliable.

The same is true of industrial applications, like IoT sensors attached to machinery or mobile fleets. To ensure they’re always connected and reporting accurate information, it’s necessary to keep them synced up with a powerful and reliable network.

While the adoption of 5G offers a lot of promise in this regard, there are also many concerns. Many cybersecurity risks could potentially stall adoption for many organizations.

5G and Cybersecurity

5G will introduce total connectivity to the world. At the same time, it will be even more susceptible to cyberattacks and over-reaching surveillance. This is because when you have nearly everything connected and open, there’s so much more potential for an attack.

Robert Spalding, the senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council, explains it well. 5G is not just for refrigerators it’s farm implements, it’s airplanes, it’s all kinds of different things that can actually kill people or that allow someone to reach into the network and direct those things to do what they want them to do.

Imagine a driverless vehicle connected via the airways to 5G. A hacker could stop the car while it’s traveling at high speeds, causing an accident. They could take control and veer it into nearby cars or right into oncoming traffic. It may even be possible to lock out the owner and steal the vehicle from miles away.

According to Spalding, 5G poses a completely different threat that we’ve never experienced before.

Traditional networks are designed to include critical functions like user access controls, data authentication, routing and billing closer to core operations. Everything else is handled on the edge, such as the transmission towers sending out the signals to mobile devices. However, to achieve the high speed and reliability necessary for 5G, there must be a shorter distance between devices that are communicating. That means more functions will need to be carried out at the edge of the network as opposed to the core increasing vulnerability.

Also, the frequency of DDoS attacks may increase exponentially alongside the emergence of 5G technologies. This is frightening, considering the attacks have grown so much more sophisticated in recent years.

Then there’s the matter of surveillance or various parties overstepping boundaries when it comes to data snooping. For example, Huawei currently the global leader in 5G technology is no stranger to mass surveillance and espionage scandals.

It doesn’t necessarily matter at this juncture whether the claims are valid. What matters is that they could be true, and that poses some significant yet rather unique problems. The issues would be exacerbated even more if and when dangerous parties are in control of wireless networks.

How Do We Protect Everything?

Spalding believes we should create the 5G networks from scratch, with cybersecurity and privacy protections implemented at a foundational level. That is certainly an innovative idea and one that would solve many problems. The question is, would building a new network in this way be realistic? Not only would the project be unprecedented, but it would also be a monumental undertaking for those involved.

Unfortunately, that ship may have sailed. Telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T have already begun building 5G networks, with testing happening as far back as 2017. The new systems will be distributed on top of existing infrastructure, which means 5G will likely inherit many vulnerabilities from the generations before, while also introducing new ones.

Cisco proposes a multi-layered security approach that focuses on threat and malware prevention, anomaly detection, and DNS and threat intelligence. It’s the culmination of all systems that will work together to mitigate risks. For example, monitoring systems might be used to find anomalous or malicious behavior, which is then communicated to a threat-prevention system and on to DNS.

An infrastructure that supports this level of interconnectivity must be built into the foundation, which may not yet be possible. These networks are being developed right now.

Baking advanced security into the devices and handsets won’t have much effect on the network itself either, outside of limiting the individual risks these systems may pose. A better-secured smartphone, for instance, is less likely to spread infections or malware across the network.

The definitive answer, for now, seems to be that a security-conscious network must be developed from the ground up. We can only hope that’s what wireless carriers are focused on providing.