6GENABLERS: A Holistic Approach to Establish Pervasive Trust in 6G Networks

The sixth generation of mobile networks endeavors to cater the needs of different verticals by intrinsically supporting the deployment and operation of applications delivered by third-party providers in a multi-domain scenario. However, this raises several management challenges due to the diversity of stakeholders proposing heterogeneous networking technologies, impacting application’s orchestration life-cycle meanwhile increasing the already complicated vulnerable surface area. Hence, these applications require a trusted resource acquisition and execution, transparency of automated management processes and resilience against security threats. In this position paper, we introduce the UNICO 6GENABLERS research project that will investigate (i) explainable AI techniques for the lifecycle management of ML models used for orchestration, (ii) trustworthy resource trading via a DLT-anchored marketplace and (iii) privacy and security preservation of 6G networks through a unified security management plane. This paper presents the foundation of the 6GENABLERS project, justifies its contribution by a review of similar efforts, and exposes its validation settings and methodology. Specifically, the outcomes of this project will be validated through a holographic communication use case to demonstrate its advancements in the efficiency, trustworthiness and security of a typical 6G platform.