AccuKnox to deliver Zero Trust Kubernetes Security expertise to help secure 5G Security

Sept 13, 2022 – SRI (Menlo Park, CA) and AccuKnox (Cupertino, CA) – AccuKnox, Inc., a spinout of SRI International, have together received a research award from the prestigious NSF Convergence Accelerator focused on the research topic, “Securely Operating Through 5G Infrastructure”.

This award is part of the NSF Convergence Accelerator 2022 cohort, Track G, and one of 16 awardees. In this research project, AccuKnox will work with SRI and subcontractor Ohio State University on a range of areas related to 5G Security.

 Securing 5G User-to-RAN: Investigate 5G-specific privacy and security attacks that span across the user edge, from 5G phones, IoTs, and sensor nets to automotive. SRI will analyze 5G UE attacks against SD-RANs and will propose RAN security services to detect and counter them.
 Securing the 5G RAN Control Plane: Design a security-enhanced SD-RAN control layer based on a framework of in-depth 5G-specific security telemetry, automated policy generation, ML-based modeling, runtime policy enforcement, and provenance-based data flow protection. The core of this work is captured in our current 5G Security YouTube video.
 Securing 5G RAN-to-Core: Design a new generation of intelligent 5G-aware, P4-enabled security services that can interplay with the SD-RAN control layer, offering novel and scalable methods to integrate core-to-edge defenses.

AccuKnox will be working on integrating its CNCF OpenSource Kubernetes runtime security project, KubeArmor, in the 5G Fabric.

“We feel privileged to be working with a seminal industry innovator like SRI on this exciting research project,” said Nat Natraj, co-founder and CEO, AccuKnox.

“KubeArmor has established itself in a leadership role in Zero Trust, Least Privilege Security for Cloud, Edge/IoT environments,” said Patrick Lincoln, vice president of information and computing sciences (ICS) and director of the computer science lab at SRI. “SRI is excited to deliver cross-layer security architecture that leverages the modular extensibility of the new 5G software-defined architecture with services, applications, and protocol extensions to achieve a comprehensive runtime security management of 5G edge-to-core operations. In this effort, it is an immense pleasure to partner with AccuKnox and leverage their leadership in Kubernetes runtime Security.”

Other collaborators in the project include Prof Zhiqliang Lin, a Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University. “Broad, and rapid, CSP and enterprise adoption of 5G is creating unprecedented, and critical, security challenges. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to work alongside AccuKnox, a recognized innovator and SRI International partner, to deliver critical innovations,” said Jim Brisimitzis, General Partner, 5G Open Innovation Lab.”

“This is a huge achievement for AccuKnox and is a testament to their continued innovation in Zero Trust runtime security. While the business benefits of 5G are incalculable, the concomitant security challenges are immense and the technical solution approaches are non-trivial. AccuKnox’s highly differentiated Intellectual Property, their Opensource led solution to the problem and their on-going R&D partnership with SRI International make for a compelling combination for them to deliver a market leading solution to a very important problem, one that has a large market potential,” said Nicolas M. Chaillan, Founder of Learn with Nic, Former U.S. Air Force and Space Force Chief Software Officer (CSO).

About AccuKnox Inc.

AccuKnox’s Zero Trust Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) is built in partnership with SRI and is anchored on seminal patented inventions in the areas of Container Security, Anomaly Detection, and Data Provenance. AccuKnox delivers comprehensive Zero Trust security for Network, Applications (K8, VM), and Data across Cloud, IoT/Edge, and 5G environments. AccuKnox can be deployed in Public and Private Cloud environments. AccuKnox is a core contributor to Kubernetes Runtime Security platform, KubeArmor, and has received 160,000+ downloads, Visit www.accuknox.com or follow us on Twitter (@accuknox).

AccuKnox is a registered trademark of AccuKnox Inc. in the United States.

Nat Natraj 

[email protected]

(858) 380-8556