It looks at existing standards and future requirements, including federated edge
The Multi-Access Edge Computing group (ISG MEC), part of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has published a white paper, MEC security; Status of standards support and future evolutions.
It focuses on multi-access edge computing (MEC) technologies and explores security-related use cases and requirements. The aim is to identify aspects of security for edge computing results that are not sufficiently well covered in approaches to cloud security.
This second edition includes an update of standards and industry groups, and some MEC security aspects not contained in the first edition, such as: security aspects for MEC federation; infrastructure security and physical protection; data protection; user and data security; network security layer and the application security layer.
Additional considerations
As edge computing involves complex multi-vendor, multi-supplier, multi-stakeholder ecosystems of equipment – software and hardware devices – security, trust and privacy are key.
Further, edge cloud federations and the presence of (far) edge devices, such as in IoT applications, means MEC security must be end-to-end, which means considering the impact on all the elements, and their potential vulnerability and integrity.
Federating the telco edge is the process of interconnecting operator edge platforms to enable the consistent delivery of edge computing services across networks and national boundaries, according to STL Partners. The GSMA and Bridge Alliance as well as ETSI are working on this.
The white paper provides an overview of ETSI’s MEC standards and support for security, complemented by other relevant standards such as: ETSI TC CYBER; ETSI ISG NFV; 3GPP SA3; and other cybersecurity regulations that could apply to edge computing.
The white paper also details security threats related to MEC. Work on standards in ETSI MEC and 3GPP is expected to consider this input from GSMA and put measures in place to enable the deployment of MEC federation.
A general perspective of the evolutions of MEC security completes the paper.
Download the MEC Security White Paper HERE.