The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) this week released an infographic underlining some of the risk factors associated with 5G wireless networks.
Building upon existing 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) infrastructure, 5G is designed to improve bandwidth, capacity, and reliability of wireless broadband services. The technology is intended to meet increasing data and communication requirements, offering capacity for tens of billions of connected devices.
While 5G is expected to deliver a broad range of improvements and a better user experience, supply chain, deployment, network security, and competition and choice vulnerabilities could negatively impact the security and resilience of 5G networks, CISA says.
In a recently published infographic, the agency details upon these risks, presenting what in its opinion represent points of vulnerability in 5G networks.
“The 5G supply chain is susceptible to the malicious or inadvertent introduction of vulnerabilities such as malicious software or hardware; counterfeit components; and poor designs, manufacturing processes, and maintenance procedures,” CISA’s infographic reads (
PDF).
With untrusted entities providing hardware, software, and services for 5G networks, the risk of network asset compromise is increased, and this could impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data, CISA says.
