# ML-Based 5G Network Slicing Security:
## 7 Future Directions and Research Challenges  
With the growth of emerging technologies, the requirement of 5G in the market will increase, since high-speed mobile communication will be in demand to fulfill the needs of the market. With the growth of 5G networks, new challenges will also open up. By considering the various threats and challenges discussed in this paper regarding security concerns, we can see there is a need to minimize those threats in 5G network slicing. Since 5G is used in multiple sectors such as robotics, medical, automobile, agriculture, mining, media, and fashion sectors [8], as well as applications such as IoT, Industry 4.0, M2M, V2X, and many others, these issues will impact the global market in the near future, as discussed in the above sections. Therefore, security in 5G network slicing is a primary concern. This paper also discussed and illustrated the taxonomies of security measures in terms of attack prevention and machine learning algorithms at various phases of network functions. These measures must be put into action to secure 5G network slicing. Thus, following these requirements, this paper summarizes major directions to be followed in further research. 1. **AI driven 5G architecture and network slicing--**This paper discussed the various standard architectures in 5G network slicing and how they have been framed to man  
Figure 10: Taxonomy of network slicing security and management. age and secure the network. The AI modulates the robustness of the 5G network [112]. The architecture should be generalized with an in-built security mechanism to handle attacks and threats [113]. A standard AI-based architecture should be framed to support flexibility, reliability, and scalability, which supports a faster data rate, improved QoS, and efficiency in the network. The security in 5G is the primary concern that must be considered. 2. **Secure authentication**--This paper discussed the various attacks and threats over the slice, which affect the user's privacy and may lead to unauthorized access. Secure mutual authentication should be incorporated to verify the authenticity and secure the application in the 5G network [113]. Therefore, a cryptographic algorithm must be applied to the channel to secure the session and keys, with real-time security analysis to prevent the network from being breached [114]. 3. **Secure service migration**--Multi-access edge computing (MEC) can be applied to speed up the service migration in the network [115]. The high throughput and low latency communication with a time delay of 1 ms-10 ms is a key requirement in 5G. The connection between 5G and edge computing is empowering; 5G enables more data collection and faster processing [6], which encourages the demands of the users. Therefore, such requirements can be attained using MEC and AI techniques while supporting the properties of network slicing. 4. **Secure and continuous connectivity**--This paper discussed various attacks on the slices in a 5G network, which affect the connectivity between the end-users and the service provider. Such attacks must be minimized by adapting NN-based security measures to avoid malicious requests, unauthorized access, or intrusion within the network without affecting the network and end-user connectivity. Adversarial machine learning attacks, which affect the ML and DL models in the network, should be reduced by redesigning the models with adversarial machine learning methods as provided in [116]. 5. **Fronthaul/Backhaul/Xhaul Security**--Fronthaul is an optic network link between multiple radio remote heads (RRH) and centralized baseband units (BBU) [117]. Backhaul is a bridge between RAN elements (wired network) and the mobile network, responsible for data transmission. Security in mobile backhaul is paramount. Due to continuous traffic by the 5G applicants and an increase in threats and attacks, security in mobile networks is of utmost importance [98].