Industry panel at CeBIT 2016 calls for collaboration on 5G Security and Privacy

A lightning talk on 5G by Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson set the scene for an industry panel last week at CeBIT, highlighting the need for collaboration on commonly recognised challenges. 

"5G is most transformative infrastructure to date. It is an opportunity to bring about economic growth while achieving sustainable development. But we have to work together in the right ways to get it right", said Hans Vestberg, Ericsson. 

The panel discussion that followed included: Hans Vestberg, Ericsson; Dr Hannen Ametsreiter, Vodafone Deutschland; Sven Heistermann, Google; Kathrina Buvac, Nokia; Erik Huizer, CTO of SURFnet; Karin Ahl, FTTH Council Europe; Anna Krzyzanowska, European Commission.

Key takeaways from the discussion are also directly related to 5G-ENSURE, with its focus on security and privacy enablers, and to the 5G-PPP in general. Here is a summary of the main discussion points, including some open questions about standardisation, another key area for 5G-ENSURE. 

5G transformers: 

• Mobility, cloud and broadband is the infrastructure of the 21st century, advancing digital healthcare and education, growth etc, but we need thought leadership from government, not just on technology issues but also for inclusiveness. 
• Industry is making significant upfront investments in Europe, including lower cost alternatives for coverage in rural areas as a humanitarian right. If governments understand it is the future, they will make investments but industry investments will always be much higher. Other regions of the world are investing massively. It's a global game. Europe has to enable the right set of building blocks.
• Bandwidth is about speed but latency will enable the development of many more services important for innovating public administration, healthcare and the private sector.
• GÉANT provides services for education and research networks. ICT has become essential for excellent research, and requires not only high speed but also high performance, which ensures reliability.
• Connected cars are just one example of the immaturity of security and privacy. Europe has to take forward this discussion on security and privacy. 5G is about sliced networks, from connected device through the cloud. Security aspects is what companies are trying to standardise. Making the public aware is one of the challenges. We need raise awareness in schools, not just among adults. 

Global challenges: cyber security, privacy, data security and ownership: 

• Cyber security is probably the most difficult topics of all because we cannot afford to get it wrong and ensure the networks do not work against us. It is important to define the minimum requirements and minimum levels of trust that need to be established. 
• The challenges are very complex and global. Security, privacy, and resilience of data require a multi-stakeholder dialogue, with the right kind of collaboration. With regard to data security, industry has the responsibility of protecting the network at cloud edges. Data ownership is another enormous issue. Users need to trust that their data is secure, at application level, not just at the network level. 
• Security is about trust-building among many different types of stakeholders, so it is therefore more complex. Gigabyte connectivity will affect schools, hospitals, libraries, public administration and business centres, all forms of mobility and rural as well as urban areas driven by big data, cloud, and high-performance computing. 
• Standards achieve scalability, connecting devices across borders and boundaries. However, it will take time to get consensus on the risks and threats. SMEs need to be involved in standardisation for inclusiveness: how do we achieve this? some SMEs will be developing standards, others will be using them to create new business.