Ericsson is to be a partner in a R&D initiative with Concordia University, the University of Manitoba, and the University of Waterloo in a successful application to the National Cybersecurity Consortium (NCC). The NCC leads the Government of Canada's new Cyber Security Innovation Network (CSIN) program that will provide up to $80 Million in funding to support cybersecurity initiatives across Canada. This R&D initiative will build cyber resilient and secure 5G networks through automation and AI that can detect, protect and prevent attacks on 5G and future 6G networks.

Mobile network platforms now serve as highly critical components within national infrastructures, supporting both mission and business critical processes across sectors including energy, utilities, logistics, public safety, and manufacturing operating in a new mobile cloud paradigm. 5G networks already ensure extremely high levels of resilience. However, the adoption of new business contexts and use cases at scale will also place unprecedented new demands on the network, generating complex security and privacy requirements, as well as a growth in potentially unsecure devices.

To ensure the integrity of national infrastructures, the 5G platform must remain secure and highly resilient. Ericsson will build on the 5G platform's inherent resilience and security through the research and development of new innovative AI techniques that can enhance and automate the current security of 5G networks by new means to detect zero-day attacks. Ericsson will also explore the impact of AI-based solutions in predicting upcoming attacks and detecting ongoing attacks, as well as applying 5G orchestration capabilities to test and deploy new defense mechanisms at run time.

The project is expected to lay a strong foundation to advance the development of AI capabilities in mobile networks and will serve as a springboard into ongoing research of upcoming 6G networks.