Telecom firms say 5G is transforming industries from farming to manufacturing as they build in security from the start

• Companies are leveraging 5G for faster speeds, expanded capabilities, and connectivity.
• Cybersecurity professionals at the RSA conference said security is crucial for 5G.
• This article is part of "5G and Connectivity Playbook," a series exploring some of our time's most important tech innovations.

Companies are already using 5G to transform their business models.

With 5G, organizations now have faster internet speeds, expanded capabilities, and an additional avenue of connectivity.

Across sectors, 5G has helped employees work remotely and allows companies to connect from factory floors, warehouses, and more. 5G also enables faster connections for tasks like remote surgery, better customer experiences for people living in remote areas, and agriculture work like driverless tractors. It has also presented a new challenge for cybersecurity.

Business Insider spoke with telecom providers and device makers at the RSA conference earlier this month in San Francisco. They shared how 5G is transforming businesses and security, and how much more is to come.

"I think 5G has impacted the overall state of security just because of the innovation it brings to us," Christine Gadsby, the vice president of product security at BlackBerry, said. "We have to keep track of innovation and make sure we can secure it. 5G is definitely an area where innovation if we're not careful, will outpace the reality of security and our ability to secure."

How 5G is transforming businesses

Telecom providers are using more 5G services within their companies and as business offerings. Large businesses present a big growth area.

Verizon's staff now have laptops with 5G SIM cards that can connect to 5G networks, Chris Novak, the senior director of cybersecurity consulting at Verizon Business, said.

"We take pride in making sure the network is secure and very reliable and something organizations can trust," Novak said.

Telecom companies can also provide private 5G networks to businesses, offering them low latency and high bandwidth to transfer large volumes of data securely. This is especially useful for industrial plants that may have limited WiFi connectivity.

For example, NTT, a Japanese telecom company, offers 5G services to consumers and private 5G services to businesses, particularly in the manufacturing and automotive industries. Businesses can customize these networks to include their security policies and capabilities.

"Because it's under your control, you manage it and you secure it the way you secure your other assets," Shahid Ahmed, a group EVP at NTT, said. "By its very nature of being private, under your control, and not being a public network, it's inherently much more secure."

Overall, customers are using 5G to become more efficient, Gadsby said.

"Customers are thinking about productivity," she said. "They want faster, cheaper, smarter. Customers are really out for quick, fast connection speeds."

5G provides better security

Cybersecurity professionals say that 5G was designed with security in mind from the start, and breaches have been uncommon so far. Businesses are also increasingly partnering with firms to build in cybersecurity from the start.

"Today when we look at it and see how it works, it very much continues to be the most secure thing we ever operated," Novak said.

Casey Ellis, the founder and chief strategy officer of the crowdsourced security company Bugcrowd, said that he's seen growing demand from telecommunications customers to get security feedback on 5G systems to identify vulnerabilities and improve their design architecture.

Earlier this year, Bugcrowd partnered with T-Mobile to hold a 5G Bug Bash, where developers hacked into 5G equipment, apps, and radio systems to find vulnerabilities. This allowed them to work with T-Mobile and other telecommunications companies to fix them.

"It's making sure the vulnerabilities are in the hands of folks that go off and fix the problem," Ellis said. "Usually what we'll do in a more technical or complicated domain is put the hackers that found the issue in touch with the fixer long-term so they can collaborate, not just finding the broken thing."

Managing risks

While connecting to a 5G network is more secure, the biggest risk with 5G is that hackers might gain access to connected devices. Increasingly, more cellular and Internet of Things devices are being connected to organizations' 5G networks, which means more opportunities for hackers if organizations don't properly manage their security.

Novak said some customers are worried because the technology is still relatively new, so they face some unknowns. He added that there's a significant gap between how fast a hacker can exploit vulnerabilities and how fast an organization can patch vulnerabilities.

That's why cybersecurity professionals say constant assessment is critical. Organizations should know what their assets are and lock them down to prevent data losses. They should have full visibility into what devices are connected to their networks and protect them by making sure they use a mature security provider.

In addition, organizations should understand what data is going in and out of devices connected to their networks and should examine traffic patterns for unusual or suspicious activity. Organizations should also make sure their 5G hardware and software are being mended if there are vulnerabilities.

With the rise of generative AI, AI cybersecurity tools can improve network quality and security and analyze network traffic.

"We're always looking at how we can make improvements and how we can make future iterations and updates more secure today," Novak said. "We're always continuing to evaluate what the threat landscape looks like. You don't know what vulnerabilities are out there until someone starts poking around and making it do things it wasn't supposed to do."

The future of 5G

The 5G transformation has not happened as fast as expected, nor has it been deployed at a large scale yet. Still, the cybersecurity landscape and threats in 5G will continue to evolve, Novak said.

Given geopolitical tensions between the US and China, the supply chain will continue to be a more crucial issue for 5G infrastructure.

At the same time, 5G will expand the cybersecurity market, and there's still plenty of room for new players to arise. In the future, more security companies could focus on 5G security for cars, airplanes, medical devices, and more. And in the next five to 10 years, 6G will become more common, Mihoko Matsubara, the chief cybersecurity strategist at NTT, said. She stressed the importance of raising awareness about cybersecurity in connected devices.

"We will see more companies, regardless of size or organization, using 5G as a natural tool for business operations," Matsubara said.