The massive increase in network connectivity, move to software-driven networks and emergence of new types of applications pose expanded security risks for both service providers and their enterprise customers. Threats are amplified in 5G, where attacks could leverage 5G speeds and new points of attack as IoT devices proliferate. In addition, service providers are witnessing significant changes in traffic characteristics with the exponential growth of roaming and signaling activity. These trends constitute new threat vectors that increase the risk of service disruption, whether by malicious actors or due to unintentional events that could impact network infrastructure.
With 5G networks, there is a greater reliance on cloud and edge compute, which creates a highly distributed environment spanning multi-vendor and multi-cloud infrastructures. Mobile network operators face new malware-based incidents that threaten network availability and subscriber confidentiality. These expanding threats and vulnerabilities – previously focused on the internet peering interfaces – can now exploit the application layer in other mobile network interfaces, degrade the customer experience, create network performance challenges, and affect operator revenues.
Since 5G is expected to serve multiple industry verticals, each vertical will expect enterprise-grade security in terms of bringing full visibility, context-driven security at scale and granular dynamic security controls. This means that organizations need to secure data and intelligent applications that run at the edge.
It is critical to consider how artificial intelligence and automation play in relation to 5G network security. Service Providers can consider this in three areas – deployment, speed and threat mitigation.
In this video featuring Palo Alto Networks and IBM, you’ll gain additional insights and find answers to the following questions:
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