Phil Harvey, Editor, Light Reading

Exploring 5G Security Strategy Considerations

Industry Voices 5G
Phil Harvey Headshot
Side-by-side photographs of host Phil Harvey, Editor, Light Reading, and Albert Lew, Director of Product Line Management, Juniper Networks, as they talk about 5G security strategies.

5G security — it matters and here’s how Juniper can help.

Juniper can help strengthen your 5G security by empowering the network to identify and respond to threats before they can do harm. Juniper’s Albert Lew explains how in this 5G, security-focused episode of Light Reading.

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You’ll learn

  • How 5G security compares to previous mobile generations 

  • The ways in which Juniper Insights detects malicious threats encrypted in 5G traffic 

  • How Juniper helps network operators analyze traffic to detect and quickly respond to threats

Who is this for?

Network Professionals Security Professionals

Host

Phil Harvey Headshot
Phil Harvey
Editor, Light Reading 

Guest speakers

Albert Lew Headshot
Albert Lew
Director of Product Line Management, Juniper Networks 

Resources

Transcript

00:06 i'm phil harvey i'm the editor

00:07 at light reading and i'm joined on the

00:09 presentation today by

00:11 albert liu from juniper networks hi

00:13 albert how are you

00:14 good how are you doing phil i'm doing

00:16 great thanks for uh

00:17 making some time for us today um i have

00:20 a lot of questions well not a lot but i

00:22 have a few questions very important

00:23 questions about

00:24 um 5g and security so

00:28 um one of the uh uh

00:31 first things i think that that comes up

00:33 when we're thinking about

00:34 how the world is changing with 5g

00:36 networks coming online everywhere

00:38 and i read the other day that uh

00:42 there's something like more than half of

00:44 americans are

00:45 or you know their next purchase is their

00:48 next phone purchase is definitely going

00:50 to be

00:51 a 5g phone um so it's really catching on

00:55 i guess uh the first question in terms

00:57 of security is how does 5g compare to

01:00 all of the other mobile generations 3g

01:02 4g and so on when it comes to

01:05 network security well that's a great

01:08 question phil

01:09 so with 5g we're seeing that there's

01:12 going to be a lot

01:13 more applications that service providers

01:16 are going to want to

01:17 provide to their customers they're going

01:20 to need to have

01:21 a more responsive network and the way

01:23 that they're going to do this

01:24 is to transform the network from a

01:28 centralized deployment which we've seen

01:30 in 2g 3g and 4g into a distributed

01:34 deployment

01:35 and they're also going to be moving from

01:37 really

01:38 a physical appliance based design and

01:41 architecture to one that's much more

01:43 software heavy with virtual machines and

01:45 containers

01:46 and they're going to take services and

01:48 applications and move them

01:51 into these distributed edge clouds where

01:53 they're going to have

01:54 software at the very edge and what that

01:56 means

01:57 is that the security is also going to

02:00 need to be distributed in other words

02:02 security is going to need to follow

02:04 where the workload is

02:06 in reality this is not going to be you

02:08 know either it's centralized or it's

02:11 distributed

02:12 or physical or virtual uh because

02:14 there's going to be a mix of all of

02:15 these things in

02:16 any service provider network it's going

02:18 to be both and which means

02:21 we're going to have to have lots of

02:22 different form factors for security

02:25 whether it's hardware software container

02:27 or virtual machine based i was talking

02:29 to

02:30 one of our customers recently and even

02:32 though they are

02:33 all in quote unquote all in on software

02:37 deployment for their 5g network

02:39 they're also looking at parts of their

02:41 network where they're acknowledging

02:42 that they have to do it in hardware so

02:45 the real challenge is

02:46 how do you now have consistent security

02:50 and apply that security across a mix

02:54 of different locations as well as

02:56 different technologies for

02:58 deployment in other words how do you

03:00 have a unified policy mechanism

03:02 that can be applied across your entire

03:04 network consistently and automatically

03:07 and then when you have challenges in the

03:09 network can we be reliable and resilient

03:12 so that even if you may have many

03:14 different types of security deployed in

03:16 the network

03:17 can they somehow back up each other so

03:20 at juniper

03:21 we've really been prioritized on

03:23 unifying the security policy management

03:25 to have a consistent set of security

03:27 policies

03:28 across all forms of security to ease

03:32 that transition

03:33 in that transformational journey service

03:34 drivers are making from a centralized

03:37 purely physical

03:38 model to one that is a mix of

03:40 centralized and distributed

03:42 and now mixes software together with

03:44 physical and

03:45 while we're doing that we're also

03:46 looking to make sure that we can

03:48 support multi-node high availability so

03:51 that we can have

03:52 heterogeneous devices and instances

03:56 and software back up both back up each

03:59 other from a physical

04:00 virtual and container standpoint to get

04:03 more resiliency for

04:05 service providers and their customers

04:08 wow okay so there's a lot going on there

04:10 there's definitely

04:11 some technology challenges that uh

04:14 uh that you have to uh kind of adapt to

04:16 as we move from like you said that more

04:18 centralized

04:19 uh way of handling security to a more

04:21 distributed more software friendly or

04:23 software-centric i guess way of doing it

04:26 um you know i i guess one of the things

04:28 i've heard about 5g networks in terms of

04:31 the security side is that they allow for

04:33 a stronger encryption or better

04:35 encryption

04:36 is it true that traffic is automatically

04:39 um encrypted on these networks or how

04:41 exactly is that handled

04:44 well you know some traffic is encrypted

04:46 automatically and and some is not

04:49 and traditionally traffic has been

04:52 uh encrypted on the backhaul in the

04:54 network so that we could

04:56 improve integrity and data

04:58 confidentiality in an

05:00 insecure part of the network but

05:02 security is more than just data privacy

05:04 right we've seen in recent years

05:06 there's been a rising trend where cyber

05:08 criminals

05:09 will hide malicious threats such as

05:11 malware inside encrypted traffic

05:13 which can make it harder to detect so if

05:16 you can't

05:16 see these types of threats then it's

05:19 really hard to protect

05:20 against them so the first thing is

05:22 visibility

05:23 you have to have visibility before you

05:25 can identify threats and stop them

05:28 but usually this requires a very brute

05:31 force

05:31 resource intensive approach for instance

05:34 you're just going to

05:35 decrypt everything that comes into the

05:37 network and while this is okay

05:39 for certain parts of the network and

05:40 there's kind of specialized offerings to

05:42 do that

05:43 it's really tough to do this across the

05:45 network everywhere

05:46 and it's really hard now in 5g because

05:48 the core networks

05:50 and oran are going to support ssl and

05:53 tls encryption everywhere in their

05:55 network so there's got to be

05:56 a better way to do this so that it's

05:59 less expensive and also

06:01 we can maintain the performance

06:02 customers expect so fortunately with

06:05 innovation

06:06 that we've done at juniper networks

06:07 including our encrypted traffic

06:09 insights capability we can enable our

06:12 customers as such as service providers

06:14 to detect

06:15 malicious threats that are hidden in

06:17 encrypted traffic

06:18 without brute force opening up that

06:21 traffic and seeing what's going on

06:23 and we're doing that by analyzing the

06:25 patterns of those connections

06:27 with machine learning and constantly

06:29 updating that in the cloud

06:31 and since we don't have to actually

06:32 crack open

06:34 all the traffic to look at it and since

06:36 we also do not take what i would call

06:39 an ineffective way of looking at

06:42 the statistical statistical

06:45 behavior and profile of the traffic

06:47 we're actually able to with a high

06:49 degree of certainty

06:50 find these threats that are in encrypted

06:53 traffic without

06:54 any impact to latency or performance

06:58 yeah that's and that's incredibly

06:59 important because both of those are

07:02 you know the reason for being for 5g

07:03 networks

07:05 right great okay good good to hear on

07:07 that front

07:08 um one last question about security and

07:11 5g networks

07:12 is you know what are some of the unique

07:14 challenges

07:15 that iot presents in a in the context

07:18 of a of you know a 5g network or what

07:22 you know what challenges should network

07:23 operators be looking for and then

07:25 what um you know i guess as a response

07:28 to those challenges what what can

07:29 operators do

07:32 well of course iot introduces a

07:35 multiple magnitude of order increase in

07:38 the number of devices

07:40 that are connected to the network so

07:42 that's probably

07:43 uh the biggest challenge it's also the

07:45 best news for

07:46 consumers and businesses because uh

07:50 but on the other hand cyber attackers

07:53 can take advantage of the fact there's

07:54 many of these devices right

07:56 and these devices are harder to secure

07:59 and they're going to become good targets

08:02 for attackers to leverage

08:04 and the reason for that is because

08:06 there's less effort that goes into

08:08 making sure

08:09 that the software in these devices comes

08:12 from well-known places

08:14 and can be really trusted right so now

08:16 we have a very interesting problem

08:19 in which we have attacks that

08:22 are could be coming from the inside of

08:25 the network because

08:26 before we've really seen ddos attacks

08:28 coming from the outside

08:29 with iot what do you do about these

08:32 attacks are coming from the inside

08:34 what happens if your subscribers what

08:36 happens if the iot devices they're using

08:38 as part of their subscriptions

08:40 become weaponized and then they launch

08:42 attacks either on the outside world or

08:45 maybe

08:45 inside the service provider and when

08:47 this happens

08:48 trying to figure out and trace back

08:50 these attacks

08:51 can cause a lot of challenges both in

08:54 time

08:54 and lost reputation in lost revenue

08:58 so right now mobile service writers have

09:01 a very difficult time

09:03 trying to understand what's happening

09:05 because

09:06 they just don't have the tools to be

09:08 able to to see these types of problems

09:11 so the network is really important to be

09:13 able to identify these threats

09:16 and to analyze the traffic so that we

09:18 can figure out

09:20 what is just like higher volume of

09:22 traffic for instance

09:24 national holidays lots more traffic

09:26 that's kind of okay

09:28 right but uh attacks are coming from the

09:31 inside and they could be mounted towards

09:33 a very particular target

09:35 that can be hard to detect so juniper

09:37 secure

09:38 juniper connected security our strategy

09:41 for building a threat aware network

09:42 is really to uh its goals

09:46 are to safeguard users applications and

09:48 infrastructures

09:49 from client to cloud everywhere across

09:51 the network

09:52 and one of the ways that we're doing

09:54 this is with our

09:56 ddos solution that we have partnered

09:58 with carrero network security and it can

10:01 help service providers identify these

10:04 inside-out attacks we also have

10:06 capabilities such as security

10:08 intelligence

10:09 which can look for activities like

10:12 weaponization of malware

10:14 reconnaissance also infiltration of

10:17 malware that may be coming from places

10:18 that you don't expect

10:20 and by bringing the power of the entire

10:22 network we're not

10:23 requiring we'll just call them expensive

10:26 firewalls for the purpose of

10:28 in these very wide edges for the mobile

10:31 service providers network it's just not

10:33 cost effective

10:34 to put firewalls there you have to

10:36 really use the entire network the

10:38 network infrastructure to detect

10:40 and respond to threats and do that in a

10:42 performant way that

10:44 also preserves the qos for the service

10:46 provider

10:47 and this is what we mean by connected

10:49 security really using the whole network

10:51 as a muscle to identify

10:53 and stop those threats and and we think

10:55 that's going to be key

10:56 to offering a high quality secure iot

10:59 service

11:00 yeah that's great too because it it um

11:03 you know it's

11:04 nearly impossible to uh economically to

11:08 put security on individual iot devices

11:10 all over the place we've sort of

11:13 seen that and that would kind of uh that

11:15 would kind of take all the fun out of

11:16 iot to begin with

11:17 um so having having the network uh help

11:20 you

11:20 uh identify and and reduce the threats

11:23 is is is a is a

11:24 a great plan and uh uh albert liu thanks

11:28 so much for

11:28 uh walking us through a few uh uh

11:30 scenarios and

11:31 and sort of uh things that juniper is

11:33 working on when it comes to 5g security

11:36 yeah thanks phil and it's been a

11:37 pleasure talking to you about this

11:39 look forward to talking to you soon

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