Ericsson Extends 5G Security Collaboration with Concordia University

Ericsson has extended a 5G security partnership with Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, through a new industrial research chair awarded by the Canadian federal funding agency NSERC. The aim of is to develop novel processes, techniques and technologies for compliance-driven security solutions for Software-Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies in 5G networks. It will address state-of-the-art and novel research topics in security at the core and edge of 5G networks.

The chair has been awarded to Lingyu Wang, professor at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE). Professor Wang will collaborate with researchers from Ericsson Research Security in Montreal, other professors that are experts in the subject matter, and graduate students to pursue developing advanced security solutions. These solutions will encompass full security management lifecycle, including monitoring security compliance, detecting compliance breaches, and mitigating them proactively.

“As the IoT grows in tandem with emerging 5G technology, it’s crucial to assure the security and stability - peace of mind - of both physical and virtual infrastructures across our increasingly networked world. To that end, I’m honored to partner with Ericsson for our research on SDN/NFV security and strengthen Canada’s leadership in innovation and in creating high-skilled workers in such a strategically important area,“ said Wang.

“With the increased focus on cybersecurity in general, and on security assurance in particular, it’s vital that we pursue research in new advanced methods and solutions for compliance and monitoring. We are truly motivated to continue and strengthen our collaboration with the leading researchers at Concordia University to generate state-of-the-art results that will help build the trustworthiness of future mobile networks,“ Eva Fogelström, Director of Security, Ericsson Research.

The Ericsson-Concordia University partnership extension builds on successful past collaborations, mainly in the Audit Ready Cloud research project, which focused primarily on Cloud security. Concordia University is home to two cyber security master programs with more than 150 graduate students and a security research center with more than 50 Ph.D. and M.Sc. students. It has recently received major funding to establish a new cybersecurity fusion center.