Comprehensive Risk Management Framework for 5G Communication

This report proposes a comprehensive risk management framework tailored for 5G networks, addressing key challenges and security concerns arising from the technology's advanced capabilities. The introduction highlights the rapid proliferation of technology, particularly in telecommunications, and the increasing reliance on wireless networks. The report emphasizes the need for robust security measures to mitigate risks associated with Service Level Agreements (SLA), partner settlements, security and billing assurance, usage and provisioning assurance, and the growing cyber security threat landscape. The literature review examines current research in SLA monitoring, partner settlement, security assurance, billing assurance, provisioning assurance and usage assurance. The proposed framework integrates a hybrid cloud-based approach to data storage and processing, enhancing data control and security. The report concludes by emphasizing the critical need for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to adopt scalable, flexible, and robust risk management strategies to navigate the evolving demands of 5G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT), providing a strong foundation for secure and efficient service delivery.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 1
A Risk Management Framework for 5G Proposal
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A Risk Management framework for 5G 2
Introduction and background
There have been a rapid proliferation of technology over the last two decades, especially
in the field of telecommunication. The wireless network is getting progressively indispensable
part of the current and future life. The fast pacing technology such as the Internet of Things IoT,
the mobile internet among other numerous applications have emerged and they are widely used
through wireless communication networks. Experts predict that by the year 2022, mobile devices
from all over the world will increase from 9 billion in 2018 to 13 billion come 2022 and the
traffic from the wireless devices will be approximately 8 Exabyte per month1. Despite the fact
that the currently used network, 4G, is able to fairly accommodate the device access
requirements and the data traffic for the next one or two years, it will not be able to
accommodate the future requirements, particularly for large internet of things IoT devices, very
high traffic applications and high mobile devices. As a result, 5G network has emerged to
support the future wireless communication in the next generation.
The main aim of the 5G network is to achieve the Internet of Things IoT and the IoT
require a network access that is resilient, secure and is able to secure the privacy of individuals
and the 5G network is designed such that it adopts a revolutionary technology for supporting all
of these2. Be that as it may, there are new requirements, technologies, as well as scenarios such
as the Service Level Agreement SLA, Partner Settlement, Security assurance, billing assurance,
1 Taleb T, Samdanis K, Mada B, Flinck H, Dutta S, Sabella D. On multi-access edge computing: A survey of the
emerging 5G network edge cloud architecture and orchestration. IEEE.
2 Fichera S, Gharbaoui M, Castoldi P, Martini B, Manzalini A. On experimenting 5G: Testbed set-up for SDN
orchestration across network cloud and IoT domains. In2017 IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)
2017 Jul 3 (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 3
usage assurance and provisioning assurance that if not well handled, would bring security
challenges to the 5G network and this demands a pertinent diverse security mechanism. The
cyber security surface through the past couples of years were quite small. Networks were rarely
connected; if there was connection, then it could be due to downloads from email or regular
check-up. People were browsing from standalone workstations. Today, massive networks are
now connected every time and this has come with a dramatic growth of cyber-attack. The cyber
security threat has sufficiently grown to an extent that it has become level concern in the
information technology industry.
5G security management has drawn a lot of attention. There is a lot of study concerning
the key security issues that are involved in the network. The majority of the study, however,
focus on the issues concerning the 5G network layers involving the logical security layer and the
physical security layer3. Nevertheless, the research has shown little attention on the security risks
in the Communication Service providers CSP sector. However, the CSP sector can experience
security issues if some characteristics of the underlying communication including Service Level
Agreement SLA, Partner Settlement, Security assurance, billing assurance, usage assurance and
provisioning assurance that if not accorded the care they deserve, may introduce security risk to
the Communication Service Provider CSP value chain at large4. It is therefore important to
recommend a pertinent risk management framework for the 5G network. In this rationale, this
3 Campolo C, Molinaro A, Iera A, Menichella F. 5G network slicing for vehicle-to-everything services. IEEE
Wireless Communications. 2017 Dec;24(6):38-45.
4 Akyildiz IF, Wang P, Lin SC. SoftAir: A software defined networking architecture for 5G wireless systems.
Computer Networks. 2015 Jul 5;85:1-8.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 4
document seek to propose a security risk management framework for the 5G based on the
previously mentioned characteristics of the network. The remaining part of this document is
arranged in the following manner: after this section, Introduction and background, we proceed to
literature review where we study the current works after which the document present the
proposed framework, and lastly summary and conclusion.
Literature review
SLA monitoring
There are active and advance research on SLA monitoring for CSP concerning 5G
network. As such several approaches and solutions have evolved for techniques that handles
Quality of Service QoS that optimizes the process within a given workflow. 5Kousiouris and his
team presents a study in which the importance of application of ANNs in the service oriented
field is examined. The main aim of the ANN in their approach is setting up the design attribute
targets for a web service system in terms of QoS. Another interesting study is a study by Ali,
Rana, Walker, Jha and Sohail6. In their work, the scholars discusses a framework for
incorporating the QoS Grid application. The authors use a performance model to estimate pricing
and response time in order to find a given job execution price.
Partner Settlement
5 Kousiouris G, Kyriazis D, Gogouvitis S, Menychtas A, Konstanteli K, Varvarigou T. Translation of application-
level terms to resource-level attributes across the Cloud stack layers. In2011 IEEE Symposium on Computers and
Communications (ISCC) 2011 Jun 28 (pp. 153-160). IEEE.
6 Ali RJ, Rana OF, Walker DW, Jha S, Sohail S. G-QoSM: Grid service discovery using QoS properties. Computing
and Informatics. 2012 Feb 21;21(4):363-82.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 5
Partner settlement gets problematic when one partner is involved in an unethical act for
example using fraudulent platforms to track your operations. 7Bhatia and Chandni proposes a
partner management framework. The authors discusses a scalable partner management
mechanism that is capable for keeping the partner on boarding hassle free.
Security Assurance
Security assurance is one of the considerations which were put in mind while designing
5G network. It motivated researchers in this filed. 8Scott-Hayward, O'Callaghan and Sezer
presents a noteworthy study on the risk management framework that leveraging SDN. As
suggested by the authors, the SDN can be a potential risk management in communication
networks. However, the risk management framework is not made clear by the author.
Billing Assurance
Many transactions are carried out through Direct Carrier Billing DCB, however, the issue
is that maintaining the functionality of the DCB sometimes fails. This may be due to the
settlements that are involved between numerous parties along with frauds which may be within
the DCB chain. 9Gohil and his team suggest a risk management model that provides an end to
7 Bhatia S, Chandni C. An Efficient Scheduling Algorithm for NOMA in LTE and 5G Networks. International
Journal of Trend in Research and Development. 2017;4(4):522-5.
8 Scott-Hayward S, O'Callaghan G, Sezer S. SDN security: A survey. In2013 IEEE SDN For Future Networks and
Services (SDN4FNS) 2013 Nov 11 (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
9 Gohil A, Modi H, Patel SK. 5G technology of mobile communication: A survey. In2013 international conference
on intelligent systems and signal processing (ISSP) 2013 Mar 1 (pp. 288-292). IEEE.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 6
end fraud management. Besides that handy move, the study does take into consideration the new
features of the 5G network.
Provisioning assurance
Provisioning assurance has been a challenge for CSP as well as financial executives for
many years now. The sheer complexity in service assurance mechanism and network activation
in CSP may be exploited by frauds due to the amount of exposure it creates. 10Mattison suggest
GRAPA solution, a standard based mechanism for systematic diagnosis and troubleshooting
security threats. However, this approach does not seem to be relevant for 5G network due to its
features.
Usage assurance
This is one of the areas that need to be monitored by CSP and should be supported by
robust risk management framework. One of the areas that should be focused on here is the ability
to monitor data consumptions correctly to promise a correct billing as well as profitable margin
for the CSP subscribers. This has been a problem in CSPs but until now there are limited
research proposing solution to this problem, this has precipitated the need to venture into this
critical aspect. In this research, we propose a framework that will take the above issues into
consideration.
The proposed Framework
SLA monitoring
10 Communications Surveys & Tutorials. 2017 May 18;19(3):1657-81.Mattison R. The Revenue Assurance
Standards Release 2009. Barking, Lulu. 2009.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 7
To ensure a risk free SLA, we will consider a framework with two phases including SLA
template management which is a redeployment phase and SLA information management which
is a post deployment phase. The forma will be accountable for getting the information from
various stakeholders thus formulating a service level agreement in a secure and efficient manner.
The latter, on the other hand is executed during NS runtime, this framework is responsible for
accessing the historical monitoring data and process them for a secure service level agreement
level.
Partner settlement
The partner settlement solution proposed for CSP will take into account the life cycle
management, business transparency among other Internet of Things concerning settlements11.
Partner settlement management framework will be capable to manage the overabundance Meta
data that are provided by Internet of Things platform for partner analysis and billing.
Security assurance
This approach will involve a high-breed cloud based mechanism which will enable IoT
devices to store and process high sensitive data locally and process less sensitive data in public
cloud. By this the device operators will be capable of accessing more control of data and will
decide whether to keep the data or not.
Billing assurance
11 Sukumaran A, Abuelela MA, Miller KC, inventors; Amazon Technologies Inc, assignee. System and method for
end-to-end network-based services usage metering validation. United States patent US 8,874,732. 2014 Oct 28.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 8
This methodology will involve the system operators. The operators will be required to
have a clear visibility on the billings and usage of subscribers. This will help in launching the
right services for enhancing customer value.
Provisioning assurance
This framework will enable detection of errors which may come from manual or
automatic provisioning activities. Synchronization for timely customer provisioning is also
considered in order to create a superior customer experience12.
Usage assurance
Session and signaling data are harvested from various measuring points along the CSP
value chain, they are then reconciled by threshold validation rule which generate alarms that are
later analyzed for any risk.
Summary and conclusion
The 5G network is different from the core and can be given full protection using the
proposed approaches. Fraudulent acts associated with billing assurance and SLA monitoring
among are no big threats as the high-breed cloud based mechanism which will enable IoT
devices to store and process data that are highly sensitive locally while processing the less
sensitive data in public cloud will enhance network security.
The increasing changes due to 5G network technology is impacting the manner in which
networks are build and the way services are delivered. However, this will exert a huge pressure
on the CSPs to adopt new risk management frameworks. For CSPs to keep up with the demands
that can be generated by connected devices, there is need to provide scalable and flexible
12 Alliance NG. 5G white paper. Next generation mobile networks, white paper. 2015 Feb 17:1-25.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 9
solutions that can be adopted quickly to bring Internet of things to the market and this should be
a robust risk management strategy and at the same time can be done by interpreting the current
drivers of threats to the CSP value chain.
Reference list
Taleb T, Samdanis K, Mada B, Flinck H, Dutta S, Sabella D. On multi-access edge computing:
A survey of the emerging 5G network edge cloud architecture and orchestration. IEEE
Gohil A, Modi H, Patel SK. 5G technology of mobile communication: A survey. In2013
international conference on intelligent systems and signal processing (ISSP) 2013 Mar 1 (pp.
288-292). IEEE.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 10
Scott-Hayward S, O'Callaghan G, Sezer S. SDN security: A survey. In2013 IEEE SDN For
Future Networks and Services (SDN4FNS) 2013 Nov 11 (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
Bhatia S, Chandni C. An Efficient Scheduling Algorithm for NOMA in LTE and 5G Networks.
International Journal of Trend in Research and Development. 2017;4(4):522-5.
Kousiouris G, Kyriazis D, Gogouvitis S, Menychtas A, Konstanteli K, Varvarigou T. Translation
of application-level terms to resource-level attributes across the Cloud stack layers. In2011 IEEE
Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC) 2011 Jun 28 (pp. 153-160). IEEE.
Ali RJ, Rana OF, Walker DW, Jha S, Sohail S. G-QoSM: Grid service discovery using QoS
properties. Computing and Informatics. 2012 Feb 21;21(4):363-82.
Sukumaran A, Abuelela MA, Miller KC, inventors; Amazon Technologies Inc, assignee. System
and method for end-to-end network-based services usage metering validation. United States
patent US 8,874,732. 2014 Oct 28.
Campolo C, Molinaro A, Iera A, Menichella F. 5G network slicing for vehicle-to-everything
services. IEEE Wireless Communications. 2017 Dec;24(6):38-45.
Alliance NG. 5G white paper. Next generation mobile networks, white paper. 2015 Feb 17:1-25.
Akyildiz IF, Wang P, Lin SC. SoftAir: A software defined networking architecture for 5G
wireless systems. Computer Networks. 2015 Jul 5;85:1-8.

A Risk Management framework for 5G 11
Fichera S, Gharbaoui M, Castoldi P, Martini B, Manzalini A. On experimenting 5G: Testbed set-
up for SDN orchestration across network cloud and IoT domains. In2017 IEEE Conference on
Network Softwarization (NetSoft) 2017 Jul 3 (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Communications Surveys & Tutorials. 2017 May 18;19(3):1657-81.Mattison R. The Revenue
Assurance Standards Release 2009. Barking, Lulu. 2009.