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5G & AI
Marin’s Statement on AI Risk
The rapid development of AI brings both extraordinary potential and unprecedented risks. AI systems are increasingly demonstrating emergent behaviors, and in some cases, are even capable of self-improvement. This advancement, while remarkable, raises critical questions about our ability to control and understand these systems fully. In this article I aim to present my own statement on AI risk, drawing inspiration from the Statement on AI Risk from the Center for AI Safety, a statement endorsed by leading AI…
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5G & Massive IoT Business
Is 5G security being sacrificed at the altar of profit, politics and process?
Homo sapiens is an incredibly adaptable species, arguably the most adaptable ever. But it is also a forgetful one, quick to take things for granted. Many of us can remember when cell phones first emerged, when the internet first became publicly available, when the first iPhone was released. These momentous shifts occurred within a generation, altering the nature of society and civilization. Just a few decades ago, none of these existed, but by the time…
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5G Security
Can we afford to keep ignoring Open RAN security?
I’m skeptical of ‘futurists’. Work closely enough with the development of technology solutions and you’ll know that the only certain thing about the future is that it’s constantly changing. For example, few ‘futurists’ predicted the Covid-19 outbreak that brought the world to a standstill in 2020. Many, however, had spent hours waxing on about how 5G technology was to change the trajectory of human evolution, telling tales of what would be possible with ultra-high speed,…
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Society 5.0
Introducing Society 5.0
Self-help authors and politicians seem to agree on at least one thing: mindset matters. The shelves of bookstores worldwide are awash with motivational books by evangelical writers hoping to convert readers to their gospel of optimism. The central thesis is simple: success depends on approaching life, especially its challenges, with a positive outlook. Politicians and leaders have always appreciated the power of mindset, though less of the positive kind, as attested to by a history…
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Society 5.0
Securing Society 5.0 – Overcoming the hidden threats in society’s greatest evolutionary leap
A term first coined by the Japanese government, “Society 5.0” describes “A human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space.” The fifth evolution of the society, enabled by the fifth generation of cellular networking and cyber-physical systems, imagines technology, things and humans converging to address some of the biggest societal challenges. The concept encompasses Industry 4.0, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Smart-Everything World…
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5G Technology
A Comparison of 5G Core Network Architectures
The 5G Core network is a Service Based Architecture. It evolves the traditional appliance based 4G Core Network to support services. It offers more agility and flexibility. The major building blocks of this architecture include Service-Based Interface: The Service Based Interfaces rely on HTTP/2 The 5G Network Functions: As explained by Ericsson “is built using IT network principles and cloud native technology. In this new architecture each Network Function (NF) offers one or more services…
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5G & Massive IoT Business
The Open RAN Lexicon You Need
The telecoms and digital technologies sectors are notoriously jargonised. Eavesdrop on any conversation at an industry conference (remember those?) and you’d be treated to a parade of acronyms, initialisms and technical terms that would sound like ancient Greek to an outsider. However, with new technologies being developed and deployed at an accelerated rate, staying on top of terminology can be challenging for even seasoned professionals. This is nowhere as apparent as in the evolving debate…
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5G & Massive IoT Business
Open RAN May Be the Future of 5G, but Can We Keep It Secure?
It’s been a year of contradictions for the telecommunications industry. Like most sectors, it has been heavily impacted by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a slowdown in global 5G roll-outs being a notable result. Geopolitical conflicts have continued to muddy the market, with governments playing a more active role than ever in setting telecoms-centred policy. At the same time, however, the air is thick with promise and opportunity. Over the last nine months,…
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5G Technology
5G in Manufacturing – 5G and Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) for Industrial Automation
In the recent report by IHS Markit – “The 5G Economy – How 5G will contribute to the global economy” – researchers claimed that manufacturing will garner almost $4.7 trillion in sales enablement by 2035. Or 36% of the $13.2 trillion total opportunity of 5G by 2035. Manufacturing will be by far the largest industry beyond mobile to be impacted by 5G. In the manufacturing sector the adoption will benefit in the short-to-medium term from…
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Cyber-Kinetic Security
Cybersecurity and Safety in the 5G-Enabled Smart-Everything World
Neil Harbisson calls himself a cyborg. Without the antenna implanted in his skull, he would not be able to see colour of any kind. Born with achromatopsia, a condition of total colourblindness that affects 1 in every 30 000 people, Harbisson’s physical faculties are augmented by cyber technology to grant him access to a life of greater meaning and satisfaction. As technological evolution leads to concomitant advances in medical science, we are seeing more and…
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5G Technology
Introduction to 5G Core Service-Based Architecture (SBA) Components
The interest in 5G and mIoT is exploding. It’s exciting to see so many IT and cybersecurity professionals in my network trying to learn more about 5G and related technologies. In addition to my usual articles about the societal impacts of these innovations, I’ll start a series of articles introducing key 5G and mIoT technology concepts. Before we move on to technical aspects of 5G security. Let’s get started with reviewing the 5G core service-based…
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Smart Cities
Smart Home / Smart Building Connectivity Options and Their Cybersecurity
In a recent session on smart building cybersecurity, a student cheekily asked me “How did we ever connect anything before 5G?” At that moment I realized I might have been overdoing my 5G cheerleading recently. To atone, here are the key performance and cybersecurity attributes of the most commonly used connectivity technologies in smart home / smart building use cases… And 5G. If you thought that the “traditional” home life is under heavy attack from…
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5G & Massive IoT Business
Introduction to 3GPP and 3GPP 5G Releases 15, 16 and 17
In a major milestone for 5G, 3GPP finalized the Release 16 in July – its second set of specifications for 5G New Radio (NR) technology. As a second article in my series of 5G 101 articles, this is a good opportunity to review the 3GPP process and major 5G-related technical specification releases. As well as to clarify some misconceptions about the 5G development process. This article provides an overview of what is 3GPP and its…
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5G Security
Does the positive review of Huawei UDG source code quality mean that Huawei 5G is secure and reliable?
No, no it doesn’t. Huawei’s code might as well be extremely secure. Their code is certainly the most scrutinized. But the recent UDG source code review is not an evidence of security. ERNW, an independent IT security service provider in Germany, recently performed a technical review / audit of Huawei’s Unified Distributed Gateway (UDG) source code. Huawei made the summary report available here [PDF]. The review focused on the quality of the source code and…
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5G & Massive IoT Business
Will Telcos Lose the Edge Computing Battle as Well?
For many end-users of today’s communications technology, the cloud is a somewhat mystical concept, a digital equivalent of aether. Most think of it as a formless abstraction “up there” when, in fact, the cloud is rooted in the ground. Or the seabed. Despite rapid advances in satellite connection, almost all intercontinental data transfer that takes place every second of the day occurs via hundreds of thousands of miles of underwater cables. Reading a map of…
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Society 5.0
What COVID-19 Taught Us About the Need for 5G
There are many adjectives that could be used to describe the global outbreak of COVID-19, but perhaps the simplest might be: fast. The disease has spread quicker than most people can mentally digest. By nature, humans process linearly. This pandemic has been a lesson in exponential thinking for the common man. Those who don’t spend their time contemplating Moore’s Law or compound interest have felt overwhelmed by infection or mortality rates that double daily. In…
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5G & Massive IoT Business
Unlocking the Future – Why Virtualization Is the Key to 5G
Depending on who you speak to, 5G is either humankind’s greatest imminent blessing or its greatest imminent curse. Still in its infancy, and not yet commercially standardized, this technology has already been the most polarizing advancement we have ever seen in communication. Consumers worldwide are captivated by promises of super-fast download speeds, split-second responsiveness and next-level mobile phone communication, but are divided on the possible sacrifices of privacy and security. Detractors continue to issue condemnations…
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Society 5.0
Will 5G and Society 5.0 Mark a New Era in Human Evolution?
In their outstanding book, Wicked and Wise, Alan Watkins and Ken Wilber look at some of the most pressing ‘wicked problems’ facing the human race. ‘Wicked problems,’ they suggest, are difficult to define, but they are essentially unsolvable in the usual scientific sense. The authors go on: wicked problems, such as climate change, are multi-dimensional, have multiple causes, multiple stakeholders, multiple symptoms and multiple solutions. They are by definition complex and difficult to process. Crucially,…
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Society 5.0
Opportunity and Cybersecurity in the Age of 5G
The human will to innovate is seemingly relentless. The history of our species is one of continual development, with the last 350 years, in particular, representing staggering technological progress. The first industrial revolution mechanized production using natural elements like water. The second revolution used electricity to enable mass production; the third used electronics and information technology to automate production. The fourth industrial revolution unfolding all around us is characterized by an exponential growth in data…
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5G & Massive IoT Business
Collaboration: The Unexpected Key to Success in Canada’s 5G
In 1967, Lynn Margulis, a young biologist, published a paper that challenged more than a hundred years of evolutionary theory. It proposed that millions of years ago, the eukaryotes emerged not from competition, as neo-Darwinism asserts, but from collaboration. Margulis’ research showed how single-celled lifeforms working together created an entirely new organism that became the foundation of all advanced life on earth. This was an inflection point in the development of evolutionary biology, shifting the…
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