Why 5G Demands a New Approach to Cybersecurity

TL;DR

5G connectivity brings both opportunities and risks, and security professionals need to ask what this technology can do to their organization in order to mitigate potential damage.

Transcript

• Hi, I'm Dave Grady, chief security evangelist at Verizon Business Group. And I wanna thank you for joining me for the session where we're gonna look at the security implications and the security considerations of 5G, 5G conductivity. When any new technology comes into the forefront and gets in the spotlight, captures the public imagination, that ... Read More

Key Insights

• 🕴️ 5G brings new possibilities for businesses, but security professionals need to understand and manage the potential risks it poses.
• 🤢 Collaboration with business leaders is crucial to understanding use cases and conducting risk assessments before deploying 5G technology.
• 🔒 The security architecture needs to be redesigned to take advantage of 5G's capabilities and integrate with legacy security tools.
• 👊 Assessing the organization's ability to scale visibility and handle the increased attack surface is essential as more 5G devices are connected.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can 5G benefit businesses?

5G can enable faster speeds, higher throughput, and larger data volumes, allowing businesses to innovate more effectively, cut costs, and enter new markets. It offers opportunities for robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, and augmented/virtual reality.

Q: What security risks does 5G introduce?

5G can potentially lead to risks such as compromised autonomous vehicles, hijacked critical infrastructure in smart cities, and increased cyber threats due to the proliferation of IoT devices. Security professionals must evaluate and address these risks.

Q: How does 5G enhance security through network slicing?

Network slicing allows businesses to prioritize and secure different types of data and applications on the 5G network. This ensures critical services receive higher priority and protection while optimizing network efficiency.

Q: How can security professionals leverage 5G to accelerate detection and response?

By deploying security platform as a service at the edge using 5G and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) technology, security professionals can automate detection and response processes, reducing the time between detection and remediation.

Key Insights:

• 5G brings new possibilities for businesses, but security professionals need to understand and manage the potential risks it poses.
• Collaboration with business leaders is crucial to understanding use cases and conducting risk assessments before deploying 5G technology.
• The security architecture needs to be redesigned to take advantage of 5G's capabilities and integrate with legacy security tools.
• Assessing the organization's ability to scale visibility and handle the increased attack surface is essential as more 5G devices are connected.

Overall, embracing 5G requires a new approach to security, considering both the opportunities and risks it brings. Security professionals need to collaborate, evaluate use cases, and adapt their security architecture to ensure a secure and successful deployment of 5G technology.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• New technologies like 5G raise different questions for consumers (what can it do for me?), business people (what can it do for us?), and security professionals (what can it do to us?).

• 5G is part of the fourth industrial revolution, enabling new applications and use cases in industries like retail, manufacturing, and healthcare.

• 5G comes with built-in security features such as network slicing and transport layer security, but it also requires organizations to reevaluate their security architecture and collaborate with other teams.