Internet of Things, critical infrastructures, and the governance of cybersecurity in 5G network slicing

Abstract

Over the last decade, cybersecurity has become a disruptive challenge driven by the shift to 5G networks. 5G is an application-agnostic general-purpose technology (GPT) characterized by its major role as multidimensional upstream technology for a large and open set of downstream Internet of Things (IoT) applications and use cases in various network industries and, more generally, within the economy as a whole. The focus of this paper is on the network economics of cybersecurity governance, considering the interplay between the recent EU cybersecurity regulatory framework, the extensive standardization efforts of international standardization organizations, and the economic incentives to tackle 5G network performance and security challenges. Based on the economic concept of 5G-based network slicing, the entrepreneurial challenges driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) are analyzed with an eye towards the complementarity between the physical side and virtual side of IoT applications. Network slicing gains particular relevance in the context of different types of logically separated, QoS-differentiated 5G bandwidth capacities, which are combined with other virtual resources such as sensor networks, data storage and processing, together with end-to-end slice security. It is shown in this paper that economic incentives for the implementation of 5G cybersecurity cannot be considered in isolation but must be viewed in combination with other performance requirements of 5G network slices. This is the driver for implementing network slicing architectures within 5G networks that feature a multitude of heterogeneous network slices with different QoS differentiation and various cybersecurity requirements.