Some key findings from ResearchAndMarkets.com’s  “5G Security Market by Technology, Solution, Category, Software, Services, and Industry Vertical Support 2021 – 2026” new report:

• The overall global 5G security market will reach $9.2 billion by 2026 [1.]
• The fastest-growing segment will be communications security at 49.2% CAGR
• North America [2.] will be the leading region projected to reach $4.1 billion by 2026
• Integrated 5G security and blockchain solutions will reach $183.1 million by 2026
• AI-based solutions for edge computing infrastructure will reach $253.2 million by 2026
• Distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection for 5G networks will reach $583 million by 2026
• Major drivers for carrier 5G security include 5G core network implementation and support of private wireless networks
• Leading carriers will transform 5G security from a cost of doing business into a major market differentiator for business customers

Note 1.  In February 2021 report, Markets and Markets said that 5G security market size is projected to grow from $580 million in 2020 to $5.226 billion by 2026, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44.3%. The market research firm believes the major drivers for the 5G security market include rising security concerns in the 5G networks, increasing ransomware attacks on IoT devices, rising attacks on critical infrastructure, and increasing IoT connections paved way for mMTC with enhanced security requirement.

The “cloud native mode” of 5G core/SA deployment is expected to exhibit a higher CAGR during the forecast period. By deploying 5G security solutions and services on the cloud, organizations can avoid spending on hardware, software, storage, and technical staff.

The cloud deployment type is often used for both private and public clouds and may vary from case to case, depending on the requirement of the client.

Additionally, organizations can scale up or down, depending on their use of cloud-based 5G security services. The cloud deployment segment has witnessed strong demand in the early phase of the 5G standalone network. It offers a wide range of benefits, such as scalability, accessibility, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness.

Note 2.  Markets and Markets expects the APAC region to hold the largest market share during the forecast period. China, Australia, and Japan are the prime APAC countries that have started several 5G-related activities; which would provide growth opportunities for 5G security vendors in the region.

Asian telecom service providers, vendors, and government firms are determined to take the lead in 5G R&D. The infrastructural growth in APAC, especially in Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, China, and India, and the increasing deployment of 4G and 5G networks present huge opportunities for the implementation of the 5G security solutions.

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The ResearchAndMarkets.com report evaluates the 5G threat landscape as well as technologies and solutions to secure networks, platforms, devices, data, and applications [3.]. The report also assesses the 5G security market outlook and potential for many solutions, services, and support. It also evaluates the impact of security functions across various technologies including Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), IoT networks, and mobility infrastructure. The report includes market forecasts for all major technologies, industry verticals, solutions, and service types from 2021 to 2026.

The 5G security market must be robust as solutions need to be deployed on multiple levels including devices, air interface equipment, cloud RAN infrastructure, mobile backhaul facilities, and more.

Note 3.  There’s likely to be an increasing adoption of 5G security solutions by carriers. It will be used for identity management, differentiated security protection, privacy protection and growing demand for data protection worldwide.  5G security technology offers various benefits such as diversified system level protection of IT-aware infrastructure, security as service, and rapid detection and response.

The growing demand for a security monitoring and threat analysis to help the business to protect the integrity of systems and data is expected to create a huge opportunity for the global 5G Security market.

In addition, the need for E2E security for vertical industries from protection to detection and increasing importance of a unified security view across enterprise, are anticipated to drive the 5G Security market growth.

Reference:  https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/5g-security-market

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Among other areas, the 3GPP Security architecture and procedures for 5G System (Specification #: 33.501) specifies requirements for E1 and f1 interfaces as well as requirements for an overall secure environment. The organization specified many areas necessary for 5G security including subscription authentication, UE authorization, access and serving network authorization and more. Other areas include user and signaling data integrity to ensure seamlessness and interoperability between network elements.

Note that there are no ITU-T recommendations on 5G/IMT 2020 security.

One of the import areas emerging with 5G security that is a greater concern than ever before is data security and private. Much more so than LTE, 5G networks must be concerned with the confidentiality and integrity of user and signaling data. The 5G gNB must support encryption as per security policies for various potential vulnerability areas such as user data in transit as well as signaling for radio resource control. Access control is equally important as well as ensuring that serving networks are authorized by home networks.

5G mobile network operators need to expedite implementation of a more integrated 5G security approach, one of the primary areas of focus will be support of 5G-based private wireless networks for enterprise and industrial customers. While today’s private networks take a more old-school approach to security, more security-minded enterprise, industrial and government sector customers will realize greater cybersecurity through interconnection and managed services with leading carrier 5G security solutions.

Leading carriers will transform 5G security from a cost of doing business into a major market differentiator for business customers including direct to enterprise/industrial/government customers and via hybrid models involving neutral hosts and/or direct interconnect with private wireless networks. The challenging task for mobile network operators is to simultaneously convince business customers that they are more secure with them than without them, while not causing alarm about security holes that existed prior to implementation of 5G security solutions.

For more information about this report please visit: https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/vqa21q

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In a recent IEEE Future Networks presentation titled, Security Considerations for Evolving RAN Architectures, Scott Poretsky and Jason Boswell of Ericsson wrote about “the trust stack in 5G Cloud RAN.”  Here’s what they said (emphasis added):

Network security is built upon a trust stack of trusted hardware, trusted software, trusted deployment, trusted applications, and trusted operations.  Cloud deployments have an expanded attack surface due to decoupling of the software from the hardware, multiple organizations sharing the same hardware, a third-party organization managing the cloud infrastructure, and use of open source software components. 

The chain of trust between these disparate components is not standardized and is implementation dependent, making it challenging to determine the level of risk, such as defined by the NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF). In a cloud environment an external attacker could gain access to a compromised container and from there escalate privilege to gain access to services and infrastructure.  Likewise, an attacker that gains access to a service can use it as platform to gain access to containers and infrastructure. 

Reference:

https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/white-papers/security-in-5g-ran-and-core-deployments

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