Vitesse Recommends Ethernet-based Encryption and Packet-Based Network Timing to Mitigate Small Cells Security Concerns

In the just concluded 4G World event held at Las Vegas, Vitesse's CTO Martin Nuss highlighted the security concerns that are brought about by the use of small cells, which are deployed as part of today's high speed mobile networks to augment network capacity and coverage. Vitesse is a provider of high-performance semiconductor solutions for Carrier, Enterprise and IoT networks worldwide. In his speech at the event, Dr. Martin Nuss said that while small cells are an integral part of 4G LTE, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) deployments and Carrier Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) strategies, their very accessibility makes them easy targets for hackers. 

Dr Nuss highlighted that small cells are more susceptible to tampering and hacking than traditional macro base stations given that they are accessible at street level. In addition, the small cell backhaul often will also occur over third-party access provider networks that may not have the same security standards as the wireless operator. To circumvent this, Dr Nuss suggested the use of newer Ethernet-based technologies, such as flow-based extensions to MACSec (IEEE 802.1AE) to be used for encryption of the traffic that passes through the small cells, compared to older technologies such as IPSec to ensure a higher level of network security.

In addition, Dr. Nuss also shared concerns over the the use of GPS timing that is easily impaired by poor reception, building density and signal obstruction, and recommendeds packet-based network timing using IEEE 1588 (1588) for small cells, as long as 1588 can be secured. Encryption and timing accuracy are usually incompatible, but modern flow-based MACsec implementations do not suffer this flaw, now combining line-rate AES encryption with nanosecond accurate network timing, he added.