Towards 5G-ready Security Metrics

The fifth-generation (5G) mobile telecom network has been garnering interest in both academia and industry, with better flexibility and higher performance compared to previous generations. Along with functionality improvements, new attack vectors also made way. Network operators and regulatory organizations wish to have a more precise idea about the security posture of 5G environments. Meanwhile, various security metrics for IT environments have been around and attracted the community’s attention. However, 5G-specific factors are less taken into consideration.This paper considers such 5G-specific factors to identify potential gaps if existing security metrics are to be applied to the 5G environments. In light of the layered nature and multi-ownership, the paper proposes a new approach to the modular computation of security metrics based on cross-layer projection as a means of information sharing between layers. Finally, the proposed approach is evaluated through simulation.