Date Published: June 17, 2025
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Author(s)
Michael Bartock (NIST), Jeffrey Cichonski (NIST), Murugiah Souppaya (NIST), Karen Scarfone (Scarfone Cybersecurity), Parisa Grayeli (MITRE), Sanjeev Sharma (MITRE)
Announcement
5G technology for broadband cellular networks will significantly improve how humans and machines communicate, operate, and interact in the physical and virtual world. 5G provides increased bandwidth and capacity, and low latency. However, professionals in fields like technology, cybersecurity, and privacy are faced with safeguarding this technology while its development, deployment, and usage are still evolving.
To help, the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has launched the “Applying 5G Cybersecurity and Privacy Capabilities" white paper series. The series targets technology, cybersecurity, and privacy program managers within commercial mobile network operators, potential private 5G network operators, and organizations using and managing 5G-enabled technology who are concerned with how to identify, understand, assess, and mitigate risk for 5G networks. In the series we provide recommended practices and illustrate how to implement them. All of the capabilities featured in the white papers have been demonstrated on the NCCoE testbed on commercial grade 5G equipment.
We are pleased to announce the availability of the sixth white paper in the series:
5G Network Security Design Principles — This publication provides the network infrastructure security design principles that commercial and private 5G network operators are encouraged to use. Such a network infrastructure isolates types of 5G network traffic from each other — data plane, signaling, and operation and maintenance (O&M) traffic — to improve cybersecurity and privacy. These security principles were demonstrated on the NCCoE 5G security testbed.
This white paper describes the network infrastructure design principles that commercial and private 5G network operators are encouraged to use to improve cybersecurity and privacy. Such a network infrastructure isolates types of 5G network traffic from each other: data plane, signaling, and operation and maintenance (O&M) traffic. This white paper is part of a series called Applying 5G Cybersecurity and Privacy Capabilities, which covers 5G cybersecurity and privacy-supporting capabilities that were demonstrated on the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) 5G security testbed as part of the 5G Cybersecurity project at the NCCoE.
This white paper describes the network infrastructure design principles that commercial and private 5G network operators are encouraged to use to improve cybersecurity and privacy. Such a network infrastructure isolates types of 5G network traffic from each other: data plane, signaling, and...
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This white paper describes the network infrastructure design principles that commercial and private 5G network operators are encouraged to use to improve cybersecurity and privacy. Such a network infrastructure isolates types of 5G network traffic from each other: data plane, signaling, and operation and maintenance (O&M) traffic. This white paper is part of a series called Applying 5G Cybersecurity and Privacy Capabilities, which covers 5G cybersecurity and privacy-supporting capabilities that were demonstrated on the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) 5G security testbed as part of the 5G Cybersecurity project at the NCCoE.
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Keywords
3GPP; 5G; cybersecurity; privacy; virtual routing and forwarding (VRF)
Control Families
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