Tackling 5G’s security challenges

5G has tremendous potential to transform our lives, with the promise of enabling a truly connected world where smart cities, autonomous cars and smart factories are not just an aspirational concept but a reality. According to recent research from Ericsson, 5G will reach 40% population coverage and 1.5 billion subscriptions worldwide by 2024, making it the fastest mobile generation ever to be rolled out on a global scale. However, as history has taught us time and time again, any fast growth technology innovation creates new cyber security risks.

With billions of devices connected to the internet, we face an increased risk of cyberattacks, data privacy breaches and even state sponsored attacks. If we don’t get the security right, there’s a risk of undermining trust in the new wave of connected devices and the concept of the smart city and smart industry at large.

GDPR has shaped global data protection protocol, it will soon be accompanied by an even tougher framework called the ePrivacy Regulation (EPR). EPR will be enacted towards the end of 2019 and into 2020, and will require the pseudonymization and encryption of personal data as standard.

Increased attack surface:5G is transforming the key mobile and cloud functions of a network and is bringing new se