5G-ENSURE Take-home messages from Global 5G

Global 5G, an international 5G stakeholder event under the theme of  “Enabling the 5G EcoSphere”, took place 9-10 November 2016.

The event featured lively debates around spectrum, standards and deployment of 5G alongside an exhibition showcasing the latest results and demos from 17 5G PPP projects, including 5G-ENSURE with its focus on security and privacy challenges. Participation at Global 5G was an important opportunity to share our insights on these challenges, particularly with Industry 4.0 stakeholders, who sought practical advice on how to address these issues.

Our take-home messages include insights shared across social media during the event.

#1 5G - An Innovation Engine

5G will be an innovation engine, bringing disruptive change across industries and societies, from automotive and high-tech manufacturing to healthcare and public safety. 5G will create new use cases, new revenue streams and new business models for industries and consumers:

@BoschGlobal on impact for vertical industries: “#5G business aspects for verticals range from new billing & business models to long-term availability of components”.
@Ericsson on the road to 5G: “Addressing diversity of the industry use cases, ensuring network slices are dynamic and secure, and on-going standardisation before commercial launch in 2020”.

#2 5G Security and Privacy Challenges Top Priority for Industry

Addressing privacy and security issues is paramount to realise the full potential of 5G in transforming industry in the EU and globally.

@BoschGlobal: “#industrie40 & factories of the future: #security & #privacy among 4 major challenges to realising #5G benefits BUT priority for @5GEnsure”.

These challenges made the 5G-ENSURE Exhibition Stand particularly relevant with many of the industry representatives looking to the project for practical advice on how they can be addressed.

Of particular interest was the 5G-ENSURE demonstration of the “Privacy Enhanced Identity Protection” solution, which has been developed as part of a first set of security and privacy enablers, available since September. This privacy enabler targets one of the most important privacy issues affecting the unprotected transmission of subscriber permanent identifier, i.e. IMSI, enabling unlawful interception and user location tracking. This issue is also a hot topic in discussions taking place within 3GPP Security Group (SA3).

While the issue is not new, recent research by Piers O'Hanlon and Ravishankar Borgaonkar from Oxford University has demonstrated how to capture subscriber permanent identity using a new type of IMSI catcher attack that operates over Wi-Fi.

Global 5G was an excellent opportunity to present the privacy enabler as a new solution to this type of issue, which the 5G network cannot ignore, and which stakeholders should now start addressing as the development of specifications gets under way. Press coverage on the WiFi-based IMSI Catcher is available here.

#3 The 3GPP Roadmap for 5G Standards

5G standardisation must address multiple levels of complexity in terms of radio technologies and network technologies. Moreover, 5G will have to be flexible and powerful enough to cater for different use cases coming from different vertical industries, while bearing in mind the IMT 2020 metrics on what constitutes a successful 5G system.

@5G-ENSURE: “@3GPPLive presents roadmap and targets for Release 15, expected in Sept 2018”.

Release 15 focuses on stringent industry requirements, with two main deployment scenarios: forward compatibility between scenarios and two use cases, enhanced mobile broadband, low latency and high availability in some scenarios. Release 16 is expected in March 2020.

5G security standardisation is a priority action in 5G-ENSURE, which has already contributed to pre-standardisation in the 3GPP, ETSI and the 5G PPP Pre-Standardisation Work Group.

Our latest brochure, The Role of Standards in 5G, is available here.