Security for Private 5G Mobile Networks

Non-public mobile networks, also known as private mobile networks, promise the benefits of 5G technology tailored for enterprise-specific needs, use cases, privacy, and control. Maritime ports, airports, manufacturing plants, logistic companies, and gas and oil producers can tailor a private 5G mobile network to its size, its OT and IoT infrastructure, its industrial applications and partners, etc. There are multiple architectures for deploying private mobile networks, which vary based on the enterprise/industry requirements and use cases along with a spectrum of regulations and allocation per country. Ensuring their security is top of mind due to its use cases’ importance and criticality.

To gain market share and revenue, a mobile network operator (MNO) must provide a set of flexible and secure architectures and services to meet the different needs of various industries regarding private 5G. These may include considerations such as cost, management, privacy of data, security KPIs, and more.

Fortinet FortiGate and FortiWeb platforms provide a common set of advanced tools for security visibility and control for a wide range of 5G network architectures and use cases. This enables MNOs to meet security requirements either as part of a 5G private network offering, or on top as a set of managed security services. These offerings include:

• Securing exposure points in private network architectures (RAN, PDN and API)
• Protection of the private network from IoT signaling storms and anomalous connections
• Security for the multi-access edge (MEC) compute against application-level threats and attacks
• Protection of the private network’s API ecosystem from attacks
• Revenue-generating security services to the enterprise over the private 5G mobile network

Fortinet’s native multi-tenancy support delivers maximum efficiency and cost effectiveness as a common platform for security service delivery in private 5G slices, from the RAN and onto the telco cloud.