LTE Security, Second Edition

Chapter 16

Future Challenges

So far in this book we have described Long Term Evolution (LTE) security as it has been defined by 3GPP up to March 2012, for 3GPP Releases 8–11. In this chapter we present our views on likely future developments in LTE security and beyond. Section 16.1 describes activities already under discussion in 3GPP standardization that may bear fruit in the near term, that is, in 3GPP Release 12 that is expected to be frozen by the second half of 2014. Section 16.2 covers studies and research activities that may have an impact on the security of LTE and potential successor systems in the longer run.

16.1 Near-Term Outlook

Since the first edition of this book was published in the autumn of 2010, many of the topics presented in the corresponding section of the first edition have matured and are now dealt with in the preceding chapters of this book, while progress on some other topics mentioned there has been slower. And, of course, entirely new topics have arisen. We will address all the topics that we expect to mature in the near term in this section. We would like to caution, though, that all this is work in progress and subject to change.

16.1.1 Security for Relay Node Architectures

The major part of the work on relay node (RN) architectures and their security has been completed since the first edition of this book appeared. We therefore added the new Chapter 14 to this edition of the book. We see only two areas where future work with security impact may be ...