It's been a year of contradictions for the telecommunications industry.
Like most sectors, it has been heavily impacted by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a slowdown in global 5G roll-outs being a notable result. Geopolitical conflicts have continued to muddy the market, with governments playing a more active role than ever in setting telecoms-centred policy.
At the same time, however, the air is thick with promise and opportunity. Over the last nine months, entire organizations have transitioned to remote working and high-bandwidth video communication. Corporations have accelerated digital transformation initiatives. Online shopping has soared. The appetite for autonomous manufacturing...
Neil Harbisson calls himself a cyborg. Without the antenna implanted in his skull, he would not be able to see colour of any kind. Born with achromatopsia, a condition of total colourblindness that affects 1 in every 30 000 people, Harbisson's physical faculties are augmented by cyber technology to grant him access to a life of greater meaning and satisfaction.
As technological evolution leads to concomitant advances in medical science, we are seeing more and more examples of humans who are integrating devices and sensors into their biological makeup. For some, like those part of the growing "transhumanist" movement, this...
The human will to innovate is seemingly relentless. The history of our species is one of continual development, with the last 350 years, in particular, representing staggering technological progress.
The first industrial revolution mechanized production using natural elements like water. The second revolution used electricity to enable mass production; the third used electronics and information technology to automate production. The fourth industrial revolution unfolding all around us is characterized by an exponential growth in data production and the merging of the physical and digital.
Cyber-physical systems (CSPs) like the internet of things (IoT) and industrial control systems (ICS) are capable of...
Recently, in the science journal Nature, Google claimed ‘quantum supremacy’ saying that its quantum computer is the first to perform a calculation that would be practically impossible for a classical machine. This quantum computing breakthrough brings us closer to the arrival of functional quantum systems which will have a profound effect on today's security infrastructure. How will quantum computing affect the security of 5G technologies currently being developed and deployed?
Last spring we suggested that the emergence of quantum internet connectivity and computation, expected sometime in the next decade, poses numerous new cryptography and cybersecurity challenges for 5G security.
MIT offers...
The timeline of human history is marked by inflection points of major technological advancement. The plow, the printing press, the telegraph, the steam engine, electricity, the telephone, the internet: each of these breakthroughs precipitated tectonic shifts in how people lived and worked. Now, in the early part of the 21st century, we stand witness to the birth of a new industrial revolution built on 5th generation cellular technology - 5G network.
As the name implies, 5G network follows a developmental chain. First came 1G, the first generation of cellular communication that freed us to make voice calls without being tethered...
In 1956, at a workshop on the campus of Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) was born. Attendants were buoyant. MIT cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky was quoted as saying, "Within a generation the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved."
This prediction turned out to be over zealous, but Minsky and his colleagues believed it wholeheartedly. What, then, is different today? What makes the current dialogue about AI more relevant and believable? How do we know that this is not another case of humans over estimating the development of technology?
For one thing,...
Not even 30 years separate us from the end of the Cold War. Yet, we appear to be witnessing the emergence of a new one, a technology Cold War between the United States and China. This time, instead of a ‘red under the bed’, the US government has declared there is one at the back door. It accuses Chinese technology companies of deliberately building vulnerabilities into their tech, allowing the Chinese to access and control the 5G critical infrastructure, and through it the connected devices and machinery at will.
Headlines are dominated by the case against Huawei, and debate continues...
Emerging Technology and Geopolitics of 5G
There are several reasons emerging technology is a highly competitive industry, notwithstanding the race for intellectual property that can be licensed by burgeoning markets for revenue. A first-mover advantage is often a way to lock in relationships that can lead to long-term infrastructure commitments, integration support services, and service delivery platform development. As the adage goes, “Whoever owns the platform, owns the customer.” This race to be the first to establish technological platforms and lock-in their customers is increasingly becoming politicized. And 5G, the next generation of cellular mobile communications technology, is the best...
Hyped as the technology that will transform the world, 5G is moving past the buzzword stage with first implementations coming to life in 2019. Nations are racing to 5G with such fervor that it now became one of the hottest hot-button geopolitical issues.
With latency as low as 1 ms and speeds of up to 4 Gbps, as well as a wider range of frequency bands and enhanced capacity, 5G will be able to accommodate innovative use cases and much greater numbers of connected devices, driving overall growth for Internet of Things (IoT).
In addition to the speed and capacity improvements,...
Don’t let the “5G” in the title confuse you. This post is not only about the telcos’ core networks, but about the 5G security and privacy issues in our (very) near, and very different future that 5G will enable. In the 5G-enabled massive Internet of Things (mIoT) world we’re about to find ourselves in, we are expected to have 1000 devices connected for every person… These devices will be the components of the ‘5G operating system’ for our smart cities, our industry 4.0, our smart homes, smart transportation, smart healthcare, and much more. To enable this future, we will...
Since the dawn of the 21st Century, the ways in which people and organizations that use the Internet experience, perceive and act in the world is radically changing. We interact with physical objects and systems well beyond our sight and comprehension. Our cars, homes, factories and public transportation are controlled increasingly by computer chips and sensors. This interconnectedness already exceeds much of last century’s science fiction imaginings, but is poised to accelerate even more dramatically with the advent of 5G.
Popular telecom carrier driven expectations about the speed and capacity of 5G consumer mobile service tend to obscure the broader...
Getting smart about security in smart systems
Smart used to be something we called people or pets. It wasn't a term one would use to describe one's hairbrush. That is changing, of course, in an era of accelerating digital transformation. Now we have smart homes, smart cities, smart grids, smart refrigerators and, yes, even smart hairbrushes. What's not so smart, though, is the way the cybersecurity and cyber-kinetic security risks of these systems are often overlooked, and with new horizon technologies like 5G, these problems are set to grow exponentially.
Cyber-physical systems and the smartification of our world
Cyber-connected objects have become...
As IoT adoption continues to proliferate, manufactures and adopters are increasingly aware of cybersecurity risks to IoT. Yet, even among the IoT security professionals, one significant potential remote attack vector is often overlooked: intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI).
Electromagnetic interference (EMI) surrounds us – natural causes, such as solar flares and lightning; and man-made sources such as radio and TV broadcasting, radars, microwaves and many others all emit electromagnetic waves that could disrupt operation of electrical and electronic devices. That is, if devices wouldn’t comply with numerous electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards which ensure correct operation in common electromagnetic environment and resilience...
As our cities, our transportation, our energy and manufacturing – our everything – increasingly embrace Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Controls Systems (ICS), securing its underlying cyber-physical systems (CPS) grows ever more crucial. Yet, even among engineers and cybersecurity specialists, one potential attack trajectory is often overlooked: Intentional Electromagnetic Interference (IEMI).
ICS and IoT – digital systems that run today’s modern society – rely on changes in electrical charges flowing through physical equipment. Creating the 1s and 0s of which all digital information is composed requires electronic switching processes in circuits. The current used in this process is not...
The maritime industry faces a not-so-distant future when ships will be completely autonomous, using navigation data that they receive to plot their own courses with only minimal input from shoreside control centers. The efficiencies this could bring are massive, but before this happens, cybersecurity issues must be addressed. Not only are many vessels configured in ways that invite cyberattacks, but security practices also need to be improved before the industry can safely navigate its future.
An increasingly digitized maritime industry
A fleet of 250 autonomous vessels may launch soon. And that would be only the beginning, according to McKinsey and Co....