National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator Track G: PETS: Programmable Zero-Trust Security for Operating Through 5G Infrastructure
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Technical Lead
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Period of performance
Project Summary
5G mobile communication technology has been standardized to provide high-speed Internet connectivity to various devices and support diverse applications/services. The request for enhanced security is becoming a critical issue when users such as DoD want to securely operate through the current 5G infrastructure. The goal of this proposal is to provide the DoD (and any 5G users and operators) with new, flexible, and programmable zero-trust security capability when operating through existing 5G infrastructure. This project provides a solid foundation and collaborative community for existing and future 5G security operation and research. The key broader social impacts and societal benefits include improved economic outputs, safety, security, privacy, cost of regulation, liability, interruption protection, and distribution of access. This multi-institute project includes experts in security, networking/communication, telecom operation, convergence research, public policy, user study, team science, and national security applications from multiple academic institutions (including an HBCU) and industry partners. This project seeks to broaden participation in the convergence accelerator research by engaging with diverse stakeholder groups including private and public organizations, decision makers, and members of the public, particularly under-represented minority groups.
Transitioning from existing research collectively done by the team, this project proposes to build an innovative programmable zero-trust security solution called PETS to enable unified, infrastructure-wide, dynamic, and granular flow-level security control across the entire 5G infrastructure, including end devices, 5G Radio Access Network (RAN), and 5G core network. Based on the proposed system, the 5G operators, developers and/or users can easily write security applications to customize their specific security needs and realize zero-trust security features. Such new security applications can continuously maintain and evaluate risks of accesses, and provide finer-grained, programmable access control and isolation of resources in 5G infrastructure. This project allows military, government, or critical infrastructure operators to securely operate through existing 5G infrastructure with respect to either non-cooperative or cooperative networks. It also enables new innovations in programming dynamic and intelligent security applications to protect the entire 5G infrastructure.
This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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PETS: Programmable Zero-Trust Security for Operating Through 5G Infrastructure
