Network Apps for Security Guarantees and Risk Analysis
Creators: name: Kontopoulos, George
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Network Apps
NEF
CAPIF
SDK
5G
i4.0
Security

description: The objective of this deliverable is to present in detail the final prototypes and the two cycles of integration activities that have been followed for each of the three Network Applications by the three SMEs participating in the task. Initially, the deliverable describes in detail the final prototypes of the Network Apps developed within the Security Guarantees and Risk Analysis pilar in the EVOLVED-5G context, driven by Task 4.4: A Traffic Management Network App (8Bells): Programmable Next-Generation Firewall that is capable of considering not only IPs, ports, and MAC addresses to identify user devices, but also any parameters that can be exposed by the 5G network, including subscriber location, thus allowing enhanced security policies. A Security Information and Event Manager based on blockchain technologies (FOGUS): security protection by performing real-time monitoring and analysis of events as well as tracking and logging of security data for compliance or auditing purposes. Software for entity authentication, registration, and authorization (InQBit): Enhancement to the existing CAPIF protocol by incorporating an OpenID Connect layer on top of the OAuth2.0 protocol proposed by CAPIF, also providing single sign-on functionality between CAPIF instances. Next, the two development cycles (1st and 2nd iterations of integration activities) and use case testing that have been followed for each of the three Network Applications, are presented. The first round of integrations has been carried out with the aim of ensuring seamless and reliable communication between various components within the system, including Network Apps, Vertical Apps (vApp), NEF, CAPIF and 5G network connectivity, on top of the cloud infrastructure provided by the Athens platform. The connectivity of 5G with the cloud infrastructure has been verified, specifically the connection between vApps and Demokritos' 5G network. The purpose of the second integration round was to validate the use-cases utilizing the final components of EVOLVED-5G. On the one hand, NEF, CAPIF and the SDK had been enriched with additional features. On the other hand, SMEs finalized their Network Apps by enhancing the 3.0 version and using the last versions of NEF, CAPIF and SDK. This version 4.1 of the Network Apps also exploited the validation pipeline before the integration test. Finally, the Networks Apps were deployed in Kubernetes clusters in Athens premises instead of using Docker containers running locally. With the second round of integration tests, the Networks Apps of the SEC pillar have reached their final stage, interacting with the last versions of NEF and CAPIF through the SDK and communicating with their respective vApp(s). The three SME use-cases have also been validated and such result highlight the fact that the Network Apps reached a mature enough state to be used by other SMEs through the Evolved-5G Marketplace. For all three developed Network Apps, we have demonstrated that the integration with the 5G control plane enhances the functionality and usefulness of the applications in a NPN context, due to the additional parameters that can be exposed by the 5G network. In addition, during the two rounds of integration activities that took place, it was also proven that the overall deployment is flexible, quick, easy to test, and can easily be upgraded, due to the dockerization of the Network Application and the Kubernetes deployment environment.