5G network projects driven by improving security and privacy

Trend Micro has announced a new study completed in collaboration with 451 Research that reveals the prospect of improved security and privacy capabilities are the main motivations behind private 5G wireless network projects.

Eric Hanselman, chief analyst at 451 Research, a part of S-P Global market intelligence, comments, "Private 5G networks are cloudy: two-thirds of respondents told us their deployments will use the technology in some way. Yet the cloud's shared responsibility model means these enterprise customers will need to build their own security capabilities.

"They said they'll need expert security partners to help them on this journey. Organisations have great expectations for 5G security, but the quality of their partnerships will be the real differentiator."

Across smart factories, smart hospitals, and other locations, a growing range of organisations is looking to private 5G networks for coverage, control, low latency, and enhanced security as one of the enterprise networks.

Yohei Ishihara, security evangelist at Trend Micro says, "We see security risk management as one of the key drivers of the business. There is also a strong desire to focus on ensuring organisations achieve situational awareness across IT, OT, and CT communication technology, such as private 5G."

However, such environments raise a different set of security issues than those in traditional IT and OT environments.

While the biggest concern (31%) for respondents is the exposure of data carried on the private wireless network, they also highlighted top key attack vectors, including: OS software vulnerabilities (37%), configuration errors (34%), networking equipment vulnerability (33%), device vulnerabilities on RAN (31%) and CORE (27%) networks compromise of connected network (27%).

Adding further challenges to security projects is the fact that nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents expect full integration of private wireless network security with existing operational security. More than half (55%) also want to make this work via automated connections.

Given the complexity of such projects, it is not surprising that over half (58%) of respondents said they would carry out risk assessments either jointly with partners or outsourcing the task completely, while 33% said they'd work with a third party, the researchers state.

Industry-specific security experience (24%) is the top criteria for organisations looking for IT partners, and 19% of them say they want to work with existing partners.

Trend Micro commissioned 451 Research to poll 400 information security decision-makers from 400 organisations across four main regions.

Trend Micro is a global cybersecurity expert focused on securing organisations engaged in digital transformation.

Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform currently protects hundreds of thousands of organisations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. The platform delivers a range of advanced threat defense techniques optimised for environments such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for faster detection and response.