# ZSM Framework for Autonomous Security Service Level Agreement Life-Cycle Management in B5G Networks
## 5 Testbed Implementation and Integration  
To validate the proposed architecture and processes, a realistic multi-vendor, multi-site setup was employed, featuring a real 5G network including UEs and virtualized backend infrastructure managed by our proposed ZSM framework. This section outlines the testbed specifics and the implementation efforts undertaken to achieve the most realistic evaluation, apart from production environments. The testbed is supported through the coordinated effort of two geographically separated locations with three independent management domains. The University of Murcia operates two separate Security Management Domains (SMDs): UMU SMD, which has a Release 16 compliant 5G network that delivers high coverage capabilities through two cells connected to a single gNB, forming the RAN domain, and E2E SMD, which independently manages the global state of the entire infrastructure. Additionally, Telefonica I + D contributes by hosting the 5G core and managing the transport domain within the TID SMD. The key properties of the testbed include as follows:  
1. Multi-domain integration, ensuring seamless coordination across various domains. 2. Virtualized management, NFV and SDN. 3. Real-world 5G NR communications, with dedicated hardware providing real 5G NR connectivity. 4. Interoperability, offering mechanisms to integrate different technology solutions. 5. Dynamic scalability, facilitating modular expansion of capabilities. Figure 9: Reactive ZSM-aligned guarantee of SCLA compliance orchestration solution. Intent-driven architecture, precisely modeling system requirements and enabling E2E enforcement. * Continuous monitoring, ensuring compliance with system policies through persistent monitoring. * Security instrumentation, incorporating tools to simulate security threats and test system responsiveness. * Machine learning integration, where trained ML models monitor and analyze security aspects. * RESTful APIs, providing communication between ZSM entities across domains. To meet these objectives, a broad range of components was implemented, primarily in Python 3.x. ZSM architectural components are developed using REST APIs for simplified communication and are containerized for deployment in a Kubernetes ecosystem. The Security Orchestrator was extended to utilize OSM for automated deployment and configuration of 5G security slices. Dynamic and reactive agents were deployed as virtual machines (VMs) through OpenStack. Several drivers and plugins were developed to handle the translation of policies and the configuration of security assets: I2 NSFControllerDriver, PoTControllerDriver, STADriver, and 5 GCoreAgentDriver. Efforts were also focused on developing the Integration Fabric, a critical component of the architecture, based on Kubernetes, Istio, Kafka, and metalLB. These technologies were selected for their ability to meet ETSI's requirements [8]. Kubernetes provides a high-availability environment for containerized service deployment and life-cycle management, while Istio simplifies traffic management, observability, and security. Kafka enhances event streaming within the service mesh, ensuring secure and balanced routing of network traffic. Regarding the technological and computational resources used for performance evaluation, the E2E SMD and 5G RAN SMD were deployed at UMU. The control plane was hosted in a Kubernetes cluster virtualized on an AMD EPYC 730P 16-core processor with 32 threads and 128 GB of RAM, while the data plane was hosted on an OpenStack Rocky infrastructure with two identical compute nodes running Intel Xeon Gold 6138 processors, each with 40 cores, 80 threads, and 256 GB of RAM. The RAN was deployed using AW2S, running the Amarisoft Radio stack on an Intel Core i7-9700K CPU @3.60 GHz with eight cores, eight threads, and 8 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz RAM. Meanwhile, the 5G core/transport SMD was deployed at TID. The control and data planes were hosted on a server equipped with an Intel Xeon Gold 5318N CPU, offering 24 cores, 48 threads, and 120 GB of RAM.