Just as the Open RAN party was getting into full swing, Ericsson has arrived in sober mood, turned down the music, switched on the lights and given everyone a lecture about potential security concerns.
The Swedish vendor, which has long expressed reservations about the role that Open RAN technology could or should play in commercial network what jobs can you get with a computer science degree, has published a blog, titled Making sure that Open RAN doesn’t open the door for new risks in 5G, that lays out the various ways in which an Open RAN architecture, with its additional interfaces and new functions such as the near-real-time RAN intelligent controller (RIC), could lead to security challenges: “The introduction of new and additional touch points in O-RAN architecture, along with the decoupling of hardware and software, has the potential to expand the threat and attack surface of the network in numerous ways,” writes Jason Boswell, Head of Security, Network Product Solutions, at Ericsson.
This is an important topic, for sure, and the points raised by Ericsson are absolutely pertinent: Network security should be one of the major considerations of any network architect, and new deployment models need to be scrutinized from every angle to ensure that the network is as secure as possible.
And the Ericsson blog is absolutely worth 10 minutes of anyone’s time to read: It raises real world concerns from the perspective of a company that knows as much as any other about the nature of cellular networking.
What’s also notable, though, is that the topic is presented in a way that suggests quite clearly that an Open RAN network is, by its nature, inherently compromised, with the use of sub-headlines such as ‘expanded threat surface’ and ‘weakened links in the trust chain.’
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