Abstract

The forthcoming communication networks for public safety authorities rely on the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networking technologies. Police officers, paramedics, border guards, as well as fire and rescue personnel, will connect through commercial operator's access network and rapidly deployable tactical bubbles. This transition from closed and dedicated infrastructure to hybrid architecture will expand the threat surface and expose mission-critical applications and sensitive information to cyber and physical adversaries. We explore and survey security architecture and enablers for prioritized public safety communication in 5G networks. We identify security threat scenarios and analyze enabling vulnerabilities, threat actors, attacks vectors, as well as risk levels. Security enablers are surveyed for tactical access and core networks, commercial infrastructure, and mission-critical applications, starting from push-to-talk and group video communication and leading to situational-awareness and remote-controlled systems. Two solutions are trialed and described in more detail: remote attestation enhanced access control for constrained devices, and securing of satellite backhauls. We also discuss future research directions highlighting the need for enablers to automate security of rapid deployments, for military-grade cost-effective customizations of commercial network services to ensure robustness, and for hardening of various types of public safety equipment.

Highlights

  • P UBLIC safety actors, including law enforcement, border control, as well as fire and rescue services, have traditionally used closed networks with high-security and narrowbandwidth properties for voice and text-based communication

  • The generation of public safety networks are expected [1] to be based on 3GPP specified broadband mobile technologies and to follow hybrid architecture consisting of both commercial mobile operator network infrastructure as well as rapidly deployable tactical network bubbles

  • We provide an analysis of public safety communication related security requirements and characteristics

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

P UBLIC safety actors, including law enforcement, border control, as well as fire and rescue services, have traditionally used closed networks with high-security and narrowbandwidth properties for voice and text-based communication. Tactical bubbles provide extra capacity and coverage for public safety users in remote rural locations and in cases where availability of commercial network is disrupted, e.g., due to congestion, failure, cyber-attack, or disaster. We provide insights and observations on challenges arising from a) the utilization of the 5G communication standards and civilian infrastructure, b) the emergence of IoT equipment, c) tactical communications in remote locations with potentially limited or disconnected backhaul, and d) distributed mission-critical application architectures.

PUBLIC SAFETY NETWORK EVOLUTION AND USE CASES
THREAT LANDSCAPE
PUBLIC SAFETY SCENARIO ANALYSIS
SECURITY ENABLERS
SECURITY SOLUTIONS IN PUBLIC SAFETY TRIALS
Discussion
VIII. CONCLUSION
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