NSF Convergence Accelerator Track G: Proactive End-to-End Zero Trust-Based Security Intelligence for Resilient Non-cooperative 5G Networks

要求军事和战术部队在可能没有专用和可信赖的通信基础设施的地区开展行动。要始终有效、高效和安全地通信，关键是要能够通过不受信任的本地基础设施运行，同时与受信任网络上的设备无缝、安全地连接。随着5G通信系统日益增长的威胁格局和攻击面，一种有希望的应对安全挑战的方法是采用基于永远不信任，始终验证的原则的整体零信任方法。该项目的目标是通过创建端到端安全情报，在不可信和可能受到威胁的5G网络上实现值得信赖的通信。该项目团队由学术界、工业界和学术与行业合作伙伴关系的专家组成，将加快开发基于软件的自动化和值得信赖的网络协调解决方案，使军事和关键基础设施运营商能够使用商业5G网络安全通信。该项目旨在开发能力，使军事和关键基础设施人员能够在世界任何地方使用军事和现代商业5G基础设施进行安全通信，而不会有被入侵或黑客攻击的风险。开发的工具将增强战术网络在执行零信任和基于策略的战术单位访问管理方面的能力。此外，融合团队将开发跨学科课程，针对5G网络的零信任培训和教育下一代劳动力。该项目将特别重视招收代表不足的少数族裔学生参与安全5G网络的研究和开发。该项目将整合值得信赖的系统设计、机器学习/人工智能和5G网络与边缘计算的跨学科专业知识，以加速在战术5G网络云基础设施上自动创建覆盖的主动、端到端零信任安全和弹性机制。趋同研究围绕三个主要推力展开。推力1将专注于对网络中的战术设备进行动态和主动的信任评估。将使用分布式和自主的方法来收集有关设备交互的信息，利用触发器和指标进行定量信任评估。推力二号将使用推力一号获得的信任信息，根据战术任务场景和不同端到端路径的要求来编排网络资源。它将使用深度强化学习方法，通过迭代从新的信任管理引擎获得访问权限并为其提供资源选择决策来实现。推力3将使访问管理系统自动化，以主动阻止对关键资源的不合格访问，并防止攻击和恶意软件的横向移动。该项目开发的工具将面向战术任务中的操作场景。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Military and tactical units are required to operate in regions where a dedicated and trusted communications infrastructure may not be available. To communicate effectively, efficiently, and securely at all times, it is critical to have the ability of operating through untrusted indigenous infrastructure and at the same time, seamlessly and securely connect with devices on trusted networks. With the growing threat landscape and attack surfaces in 5G communication systems, a promising approach to tackle the security challenges is to adopt a holistic Zero Trust approach based on the principle of “never trust, always verify”. The goal of this project is to achieve trustworthy communications over untrusted and potentially compromised 5G networks by creating end-to-end security intelligence. The project team comprising of experts from academia, industry, and academic-industry partnerships, will accelerate the development of a software-based solution for automated and trustworthy network orchestration allowing military and critical infrastructure operators to securely communicate using commercial 5G networks. The project aims to develop capabilities that enable military and critical infrastructure personnel to securely communicate using both military and modern commercial 5G infrastructure anywhere in the world, without the risk of being breached or hacked. The developed tools will enhance the capabilities of tactical networks in enforcing Zero Trust and policy-based access management of tactical units. Furthermore, the convergence team will develop a cross-disciplinary curriculum for training and education of next-generation workforce on Zero Trust for 5G networks. Special emphasis will be placed on recruiting under-represented minority students in the research and development of secure 5G networks.This project will integrate cross-disciplinary expertise from trustworthy system design, machine learning/artificial intelligence, and 5G networks & edge computing to accelerate the automated creation of an overlay of proactive, end-to-end zero-trust security and resilience mechanism over the tactical 5G network cloud infrastructure. The convergence research is centered around three main thrusts. Thrust 1 will focus on the dynamic and proactive trust evaluation of tactical devices in the network. A distributed and autonomous approach will be used to collect information about device interactions, leverage triggers, and indicators to make quantitative trust assessments. Thrust 2 will use the trust information obtained in Thrust 1 to orchestrate network resources according to tactical mission scenarios and the requirements of different end-to-end paths. It will be achieved using a deep reinforcement learning approach by iteratively obtaining access permissions from a novel trust management engine and providing it with resource selection decisions. Thrust 3 will automate the access management system to proactively thwart unqualified access to critical resources and prevent lateral movement of attacks and malware. The tools developed as a result of this project will be oriented toward operational scenarios in tactical missions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.