On 21st May 2014 I went to the “Light Reading Mobile Network Security Conference“.  It was an interesting session – and unusual in that covered many of the technical challenges of security of LTE.

My particular talk was held in the graveyard slot after lunch, and I tried to skim through the evolution from GSM to LTE. Trying to be light on a very technical issue was difficult! I was asked to comment on the three things to sell IPSec to an operator, and as well as mentioning some technical ones, I also mentioned the difficulty in justifying the risks in terms of the potential cost … try explaining that in Layman’s terms to a CFO.

Some of the issues discussed were stimulating to further thoughts:

• Small Cells were still a challenge for security: The realization of a real small cell clearly diverged from the suggested 3GPP standards. We will probably see more emphasis on security as more they become more exposed to hackers – but since it has already happened when will that be?

• Network Function Virtualization (NFV) featured many of the talks. We also had a presentation from an ETSI Industry Group on this topic. Is this hype or reality? There was a long debate and I felt it was inconclusive on the business case. We’ll see if it matures enough.

• Node balancing and DNS security, which had caused quite a few security issues in the past (and network outages around the world!). Small Cells will just increase the challenge of handling this. One member of the audience even dared to suggest that if you have to allow all this flexibility on loading, why not run your own network?

• The physical security of the LTE infrastructure was addressed by some of the presenters and questions raised. This will clearly be of great importance, as in LTE a lot more of the intelligence is with the eNode(B). There is also the difficulty in managing a mixed network from different vendors, which produce horrendous security and certificate management challenges. This is even true where operators share infrastructures!

If you want to talk about these issues further – practical technical and commercial help is on hand – so do get in touch!