Securing Private 5G Campus Networks: Abstract Survey on Current Status,
Security Threats, and Research Landscape
Abstract
The fifth-generation (5G) New Radio (NR) promises communication services
with high reliability, extremely low latency, high capacity, lower
complexity, longer battery-life devices, and high user density in order
to support the most well-known use cases of latency-aware Ultra Reliable
Low Latency Communications (URLLC), unlimited-things-centric Massive
Machine Type Communication (mMTC), and bandwidth-devouring enhanced
Mobile Broadband (eMBB). To facilitate the exploitation and
implementation of this new radio access technology, the so-called
private 5G campus networks are expected to become widely used, utilizing
multiple access techniques, frequency bands, and the entire underlying
wireless infrastructure of public networks for private businesses,
vertical industries, and manufacturing. The primary purpose of this type
of communication network is to enable businesses, vertical industries,
service sectors, universities, and even individuals to take advantage of
5G tailored to their specific activities or to develop their own local
networks. Thus, the different advantages of such a technological
revolution can be separately exploited by various stakeholders, and at
the same time, the scientific community will be able to easily
participate in its research and development aimed at addressing its
shortcomings. Taking into account both the business and technical
benefits, the grand objective of this study is to provide an overview of
the security aspects of the private 5G campus networks. To that end, we
first focus on the characterization of private 5G campus networks and
discuss some background on a number of industrial applications that
these types of networks can support. Then, we identify their different
security flaws and potential origins. Finally, we highlight several
research challenges that need to be addressed.