Optimal Security Risk Management Mechanism for the 5G Cloudified Infrastructure

This work proposes an optimal security risk management mechanism to holistically minimize the risks of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack and Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations that might unfold at the 5G edge-cloud ecosystem. Using the Semi-Markov Decision Process framework, a cyber risk-aware controller is designed to optimally decide on the admission, placement, and migration of a service taking into consideration a user taxonomy and the service requirements. A new cost structure that balances the targeted security risks as well as the cost and the reward of a secure service provisioning is introduced to pave the way for a safe edge-cloud operation. To proactively restrict the population of untrusted users, we consider security controls in the form of a linear and an exponential cost functions and show that the former represents a more flexible and profitable pathway for a Mobile Network Operator to operate at the expense of an inflated security risk while the latter leads to the opposite outcome. Results show that the baseline mechanism might violate the SLA and expose the edge and the cloud to a DoS attack in levels that are 10², 10¹², and 10¹⁴ times higher than those of the proposed controller.

I. Introduction

5G is a critical telecommunication infrastructure that will pave the way for a fully connected society. The anticipated critical role of 5G allied to the fact that its standardization is still unfolding have caused a lot of speculation about its unavoidable adoption and spurred a fierce technological and political debate on the international stage. To reduce anxiety while boosting the confidence of stakeholders towards the 5G deployment, a security risk centricity should be incorporated into the operational and management mechanisms of the 5G infrastructure, which will enable Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to gain, keep, and increase their market share in a successful and sustainable manner.