The Global Race for Technological Superiority by Fabio Rugge

Author:Fabio Rugge [Rugge, Fabio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Media Studies, Social Science, Political Science, Political Process, Computerized Home & Entertainment, Geopolitics, Computers, General
ISBN: 9788855261432
Google: ZK6TzAEACAAJ
Publisher: Ledizioni
Published: 2019-01-15T09:38:23+00:00

3. Why 5G Requires New Approaches to Cybersecurity

Tom Wheeler, David Simpson

“The race to 5G is on and America must win”, President Donald Trump said in April172. For political purposes, that “race” has been defined as which nation gets 5G built first. It is the wrong measurement.

The United States and Europe must “fire first effectively” in their deployment of 5G. Borrowing on a philosophy Admiral Arleigh Burke coined in World War II: Speed is important, but speed without a good targeting solution can be disastrous173.

5G will be a physical overhaul of essential networks that will have decades-long impact. Because 5G is the conversion to a mostly all-software network, future upgrades will be software updates much like the current upgrades to smartphones. Because of the cyber vulnerabilities of software, the tougher part of the real 5G “race” is retooling how to secure the most important network of the XXI century and the ecosystem of devices and applications that sprout from that network.

Beyond the vulnerabilities of software, 5G networks have another vulnerability: a supply chain that circles the world. From hardware, software and firmware to the design of the apps and devices using the network, the 5G supply chain is composed of numerous participants. Each of these participants rely on the others, but none has cybersecurity as their core responsibility.

The new capabilities made possible by new applications riding 5G networks hold tremendous promise. As the United States and Europe pursue the connected future, however, they must place equivalent – if not greater – focus on the security of those connections, devices, and applications. To build 5G on top of a weak cybersecurity foundation is to build on sand. This is not just a matter of the safety of network users, it is a matter of national security – and a geopolitical imperative.

Hyperfocus on Huawei

Effective progress toward achieving minimally satisfactory 5G cyber risk outcomes is compromised by a hyperfocus on legitimate concerns regarding Huawei equipment in US and European networks. While the Trump administration has continued an Obama-era priority of keeping Huawei and ZTE out of domestic networks, for instance, it is only one of the many important 5G risk factors. The hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding the Chinese equipment issues is drowning out what should be a strong focus on the full breadth of cybersecurity risk factors facing 5G.

The purpose of this paper is to move beyond the Huawei infrastructure issue to review some of the issues that the furor over Huawei has masked. Policy leaders from Washington to Brussels should be conducting a more balanced risk assessment, with a broader focus on vulnerabilities, threat probabilities, and impact drivers of the cyber risk equation. This should be followed by an honest evaluation of the oversight necessary to assure that the promise of 5G is not overcome by cyber vulnerabilities, which result from hasty deployments that fail to sufficiently invest in cyber risk mitigation.

Such a review of 5G cyber threat mitigation should focus on the responsibilities of both 5G businesses and government. This should include a

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