With every advance in communications technology comes a fresh vulnerability that opens the user to cyberattack.
So it goes with 5G, the so-called fifth generation of cellular connectivity, which has been touted as the new gold standard for network speed, bandwidth, availability and reliability.
5G has actually been with us in embryonic form since 2018, although it didn’t start rolling out widely across commercial and consumer mobile networks until 2020, and didn’t become ubiquitous until even more recently than that.
The advantages of 5G are compelling, linking mobile communications with the cloud, internet of things and artificial intelligence, among other innovations. But with its expanded bandwidth and menu of added capabilities, it also provides a new and easy target for cybercriminals.
Aspects of 5G technology present “more of a surface for an attack,” says Chris Gehlen, chief executive officer of Neutroon, provider of a platform for private 5G connectivity and edge computing. 5G increases the number of devices that can be connected, he notes, but the presence of multiple stakeholders in a tech stack “can open the door to more [illegal] access as well.” And its higher data speeds make possible the launching of more sophisticated attacks, such as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) incident. Such attacks grew in number in 2022 and 2023.
