Threats and security defense of next generation networks

The coming of Next-Generation Networks (NGN) is a reality in the development of telecommunications. Although their introduction represents a technological jump, it also poses an enormous challenge from the security standpoint. In this article, an integral analysis is carried out on some aspects related to the security of those networks. First, the threats that are inherited from traditional public switched telephone networks (PSTN), Internet protocol (IP) data, and television networks are discussed together with the way in which they combine to obtain the characteristic NGN threats. Second, defense mechanisms of traditional networks are analyzed to propose defense mechanisms that can be applied to NGN. Also, the principles of NGN defense mechanism combination and the requirements of the corresponding security tools are considered. The analysis given here represents an important first step to organize and homogenize NGN security work.