NCCoE Releases Preliminary Draft on 5G Cybersecurity

The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has released a new preliminary draft publication, Special Publication (SP) 1800-33 Volume B, 5G Cybersecurity: Approach, Architecture, and Security Characteristics. Commercial mobile network operators, potential private 5G network operators, and organizations using and managing 5G-enabled technology will find SP 1800-33 Volume B of particular interest.

About This Guide

As 5G rolls out more widely, we must safeguard the technology from cyberattacks as 5G development, deployment, and usage continuously evolves. The NCCoE is addressing these challenges by collaborating with industry to design and implement examples of practical solutions that operators and users of 5G networks can use to mitigate 5G cybersecurity risks.

Our solutions build upon the work of the NCCoE’s Trusted Cloud project, where hardware-enabled security serves as the foundation of cloud security. We are also using a combination of 5G standards-based security features and a secure cloud-based hosting infrastructure. The result will be a commercial-grade security reference architecture for 5G networks that bridges the gap between IT and telecommunications cybersecurity capabilities.

Other features of this volume include—

• Why we are building the example solution to address 5G cybersecurity challenges, including a proposed risk analysis and the security capabilities that the example solution will enable and demonstrate
• A high-level description of the reference system architecture
• Details on the capabilities of numerous security components implemented in the lab.

We Want to Hear from You!

The NCCoE is making each SP 1800-33 volume available as a preliminary draft for public comment while work continues on the project. Review the preliminary draft and submit comments online on or before June 27, 2022. You can also email your comments to 5g-security [at] nist.gov (5g-security[at]nist[dot]gov).

We welcome your input and look forward to your comments. We invite you to 5G-security [at] nist.gov (subject: Sign%20me%20up%20for%20the%205G%20COI) (join the 5G Community of Interest) to receive news and updates about this project.  

Together in cybersecurity.

-5G Project Team