Privacy Protection in LTE and 5G Networks

Abstract

Privacy needs to be secured in cellular networks. In the domain of telecommunications, privacy attributes to personal information and subscriber identity. In service providing organizations, privacy impact assessment is performed to identify possible risks to business operations of the organizations caused by collecting personally identifiable information and to ensure compliance with applicable legal, regulatory and policy requirements for privacy protection. However, privacy risks can be estimated not only from organizations' business but also from customers' perspectives. While there are many tools, techniques and templates available assisting organizations in performing privacy impact assessments, the subscribers,' in most cases subjective, perspective on privacy risks has not attracted too much attention by research communities. The paper intends to show the existence of the gap and to contribute towards the understanding of privacy aspects of LTE and 5G networks from subscribers' perspective. This paper first outlines the main vulnerabilities that can be exploited to violate subscriber privacy in LTE networks. Then, controls to mitigate privacy risks in 5G networks are evaluated. The paper also discusses privacy risks introduced by new technologies, including software defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV) and cloud computing in 5G networks. The privacy risk assessment in LTE and 5G networks is performed from the perspective of customers, not from the perspective of service providers. Protection of subscriber's privacy in the 6G networks is also briefly discussed.