A Comprehensive Guide to 5G Security

16Cloud and MEC Security

Jude Okwuibe, Madhusanka Liyanage, Ijaz Ahmad, and Mika Ylianttila

Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

16.1 Introduction

The extreme capacity and performance demands of 5G networks will necessitate major changes in the way we produce and utilize digital services. 5G will usher in a massive array of new devices, services and use cases driven by technology developments and socio‐economic transformations into the mobile network arena. Records will be set on every metric; ubiquitous ultra‐broadband, virtual zero latency and gigabit experience will be the key defining features of the 5G networks. Certain key technologies and methods become pertinent towards the evolution to 5G; among these are Cloud Computing and Multi‐Access Edge Computing (MEC).

The relevance of cloud computing to mobile network has been on upward spiral over the last decade. Cloud computing provides on‐demand computing resources and services on a scalable platform to both large and small organizations. At present, popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Netflix are basically running on clouds. Besides, users are increasingly accustomed to carrying multiple mobile devices to meet their different lifestyle and work demands. This buttresses the need for cloud services in two ways; first, to ensure that user data is synchronized on all devices and second, to enable low storage devices to perform storage intensive operations leveraging ...