Towards a Security Plane for 6G Ecosystems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a flexible, proactive Security Plane for 6G networks built on programmable security functions and pre-assessment to enhance reliability and address evolving security challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a novel softwarized Security Plane architecture with live, adaptable security functions and a pre-assessment mechanism for 6G ecosystems.

Findings

Conceptual framework for Security Plane in 6G

Proactive security strategy with pre-assessment

Emphasis on flexibility and adaptability in security functions

Abstract

6G networks promise to be the proper technology to support a wide deployment of highly demanding services, satisfying key users-related aspects such as extremely high quality, and persistent communications. However, there is no service to support if the network is not reliable enough. In this direction, it is with no doubt that security guarantees become a must. Traditional security approaches have focused on providing specific and attack-tailored solutions that will not properly meet the uncertainties driven by a technology yet under development and showing an attack surface not completely identified either. In this positioning paper we propose a softwarized solution, defining a Security Plane built on a top of programmable and adaptable set of live Security Functions under a proactive strategy. In addition, in order to address the inaccuracies driven by the predictive models a pre-assessment scenario is also considered ensuring that no action will be deployed if not previously verified. Although more efforts are required to develop this initiative, we think that such a shift paradigm is the only way to face security provisioning challenges in 6G ecosystems.