"Dr. Hisham Kholidy Receives $1.1 Million Contract from Air Force Research Lab to Improve Security Across 5G Open Architecture"
Dr. Hisham A. Kholidy, associate professor and chair of the Network and Computer Security Department at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has been awarded a nearly $1.1 million contract by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for a 36-month project aimed at helping to address the need for an advanced security system capable of identifying, assessing, and protecting against attacks across the 5G open architecture without human intervention. Dr. Kholidy notes that the Department of Defense (DoD) has identified 5G security as a critical area of national security. 5G is expected to significantly affect global economic growth and technological development for many stakeholders. The proposed research explores mechanisms for protecting 5G open networks, meeting resilience requirements, and mitigating potential attack damage. Improving the current 5G security testbed developed in collaboration with AFRL engineers to support the 5G open architecture network is one of this project's key contributions. This network will be the first "open 5G-federated testbed" to support 5G multi-vendor and commercial service providers. It will help them develop innovative cybersecurity solutions and data sets for the emerging global architecture. These solutions and data sets will allow researchers to enhance this new architecture. The project will also develop an intelligent Vulnerability Assessment Approach (VAA) to evaluate the new architecture's security level. This article continues to discuss the research aimed at improving security across the 5G open architecture.