Page 77 - Cyber Defense eMagazine December 2022 Edition

5G and Potential Security Risks

5G network edges are designed to support various use cases that will prove extremely important to
organizations across the board, including video analytics, location services, Internet of Things (IoT),
Augmented Reality (AR), optimized local content distribution, and more.

It is well documented that 5G comes with promising advancements of greater speeds, higher bandwidth,
improved connectivity, and lower latency, all while handling millions to billions of devices. However, along
with these advantages 5G also introduces new security challenges. 5G not only increases the number of
devices but types of devices to protect, including IoT devices, sensors, cameras, virtual assistants, etc.
This expands the network’s attack surface, resulting in more network vulnerabilities and holes for
attackers to exploit.

SASE is Crucial to 5G Succeeding

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is crucial to a successful 5G environment, since it enables improved
services and performance, increased security, and faster infrastructure rollout and management. SASE
delivers end-to-end security, visibility, and telemetry for 5G infrastructure and services; and enforces
compliance through a consistent security posture across public cloud, hybrid cloud, on-premises and
MEC.

SASE interworks with 5G network slicing to guarantee aggressive 5G SLAs with end-to-end security and
enables flexible implementation of Gi-LAN services in various form factors.

Secure SD-WAN, a SASE component, combined with network slicing guarantees that Service Level
Agreements are met, and provides end-to-end security, including UTM, IDS/IPS, Anti-Virus, and more.

SASE can also enable automated 5G rollout of thousands of devices with true zero-touch provisioning
using a SASE orchestrator, and leverages elastic auto-scaling and network intelligence to meet real-time
capacity demands.

5G Deployment and Environmental Considerations

Preparing for and supporting 5G networks can seem daunting. With the right tools in place, including
Secure SD-WAN and other SASE functions, organizations are prepared to best take advantage of all the
benefits 5G has to offer, while addressing new security threats.

Organizations can dramatically lower CAPEX and OPEX of their 5G networks by choosing:

A multi-tenant uCPE architecture. One of the key use cases for 5G is to enable multiple virtual network
operators’ (MVNOs’) use of a shared 5G infrastructure. This is done to provide differentiated services
based on the application requirement (or network slice requirement) while keeping overall costs low. This
approach delivers advantages of centralized management, reducing appliance sprawl and improving
adaptability. One of the core components to its success is multi-tenancy. Each tenant can have multi-

Cyber Defense eMagazine – December 2022 Edition 77
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