Security in 5G and beyond recent advances and future challenges

5G, 6G, and beyond (xG) technologies aim at delivering emerging services with new requirements and challenges, enabling full and hyper mobile connectivity over the world. These beyond 5G networks are expected to ensure better quality of service, very high data rate, improved network security, high capacity, low latency, and low cost. In order to meet these objectives, a number of key enabler technologies have been proposed including massive multiple input multiple output, small cells, mobile edge computing, software defined network, network function virtualization, heterogeneous networks, network slicing, cloud radio access network, ultra-dense network, energy efficiency, and spectrum sharing. Although, the potential interest of these technologies in the network, they opened the door to many security concerns and challenges making the network security one of the primary concerns of the future wireless communication networks. In this article, we investigated the recent advancements on the xG security issues resulted by each key enabler technologies. We analyzed how to secure the network while meeting the emerging promising services, users' demands, and service requirements. We also discussed how the security issues raised by these emerging technologies can be mitigated for efficient and secure communication.

Automated summary

5G, 6G, and beyond networks aim to provide emerging services with new requirements and challenges through key enabler technologies. While these technologies have potential interests, they also bring security concerns and challenges, making network security a primary concern for future wireless communication networks.