Challenges for the security analysis of Next Generation Networks

The increasing complexity of information and telecommunications systems and networks is reaching a level beyond human ability, mainly from the security assessment viewpoint. Methodologies currently proposed for managing and assuring security requirements fall short of industrial and societal expectations. The statistics about vulnerabilities and attacks show that the security, reliability and availability objectives are not reached and that the general threat situation is getting worse. With the deployment of Next Generation Networks – NGNs, the complexity of networks, considering their architecture, speed and amount of connections, will increase exponentially. There are several proposals for the network and security architectures of NGNs, but current vulnerability, threat and risk analysis methods do not appear adequate to evaluate them. Appropriate analysis methods should have some additional new characteristics, mainly regarding their adaptation to the continuous evolution of the NGNs. In addition, the application of security countermeasures will require technological improvements, which will demand further security analyses. This paper evaluates the current vulnerability, threat and risk analysis methods from the point of view of the new security requirements of NGNs. Then, the paper proposes to use autonomic and self-adaptive systems/applications for assuring the security of NGNs.