Cyber security for mobile networks: What’s the big deal?

In today’s digital world, where the internet has become a part of life, growing digitalization and networking has also seen incidents of cybercrime and data breach becoming more and more common. Cyber threats are constantly evolving, becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect.

India ranks amongst some of the most cyber attacked countries in the world. As per the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, there have been close to 7 lakh cyber-attacks reported in the country in 2020 (till Aug).

Importance of digital trust and key attributes

CSPs are relying on 5G to generate new revenue streams by offering new/ innovative services to end consumers, enterprises, and businesses. Their success depends partly on their ability to build ‘digital trust’ in the eyes of their customers by ensuring that their confidential enterprise or personal data is safe. The security needs will vary with the user and type of service, for example, the security needs of a retailer will be different from those of an enterprise, e.g., financial organization. 5G will allow connecting millions and millions of new IoT end points and devices to the network. The lagging security protection of many IoT devices can offer the opportunities for launching cyber-attacks through a much greater number of access points.