Microservices migration brings more security challenges, Rakuten Mobile

As service providers migrate toward 5G, open radio access network (RAN), and cloud technologies, more communication is needed amongst operators than ever before in order to solve a myriad of security challenges, according to Rakuten Symphony and Rakuten Mobile Chief Information Security Officer John Carse who spoke to SDxCentral on the topic ahead of Mobile World Congress Las Vegas.

Carse is moderating the Securing the Connected World session which is expected to discuss potential security challenges that 5G implementation and virtualized network functions (VNFs) migration would bring, especially considering the recent spotlight ethical hackers shone on 5G and open RAN’s vulnerability to hacking.

However, he thinks these security challenges are different from what many expect and require a different approach.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of it’s easier to hack,” Carse argues. Instead, containerization and cloudification “introduce a different way of protecting things which is new to the telecom industry,” he said.

The migration from VNFs to cloud-native network functions (CNFs) is different from the shift from bare metal to virtual machines, he said, adding that it’s no longer “lifted and shifted” and cannot apply the similar “data center thinking.”

“Actually, going into microservices is different,” Carse said. “How you manage the underlying architecture and what the architecture is, and then how you manage these [as] now applications that are actually running in the same space as your other network functions — this is a different paradigm than virtual machines.”

The concepts of security that apply to those new use cases are “fairly new to everybody,” he said. “That’s where everyone kind of becomes afraid, or there’s fear. It’s the obscurity, the blanket’s kind of ripped off everyone’s eyes and stuff, and all of a sudden, you see that, oh my gosh, this is a little bit more complicated than it used to be.”

Those challenges are part of the reasons Carse calls for more communications in the telecom community over 5G, Open RAN, and cloud security.

“There haven’t been as many opportunities for folks to come together and have these conversations about security, and 5G, and open RAN, and such in the cloud, and everything else,” Carse said. “And I think that a lot of the misunderstandings, or a lot of what we’re seeing come out, would be really helpful if people came together and just talked about it.”

He noted telecom operators and vendors can benefit from sharing experiences and objectives they have from a security perspective. “[In] telecom, we don’t have a congress just about security that has like thousands of vendors that show up and talk about it. But maybe we’ll evolve to that.” sdxcentral