Project Highlights

As 2025 draws to a close and with the holiday season fast approaching, it is time for an update on the RIGOUROUS project as it enters its final operational phase. The consortium recently gathered for a plenary meeting in Bucharest, Romania, in November. This meeting served as a crucial checkpoint to evaluate the current status of the RIGOUROUS platform and to plan the concluding steps of the project.

With the finish line in sight, the team is energized to convert years of research into validated results. And with that, let’s move on to the main topic of this newsletter!

Our Progress So Far

With the project approaching its conclusion, the focus of the consortium has shifted from development towards validation activities and consolidating the results gathered over the project’s lifetime. The technical integration is now largely under way and almost complete, marking a significant transition where individual components are no longer viewed in isolation. This allows all the partners to concentrate on the assessment of the RIGOUROUS framework against its own initial requirements.

Currently, we are heavily committed to the production of the project’s final major deliverables, ensuring that the innovations developed are rigorously documented and proven:

• System Validation and Showcasing (D5.3): Significant effort is being placed on D5.3, a pivotal deliverable that will detail the final outcomes of the system validation, evaluation, and use case showcasing.

• Ethics and Project Management (D1.3): Simultaneously, work is progressing on D1.3 covering the critical aspects of ethics, gender, the advisory board’s final inputs, and the data management plan ensuring that our AI-driven security solutions adhere to the highest standards of ethical compliance.

• Exploitation and Innovation (Work Package 6): We are also intensifying work within Work Package 6, which focuses on the project’s final exploitation and innovation plan. As the project concludes, our goal is to define a clear roadmap for how these technologies might be adopted by the industry, standardized, or further developed.

The Bucharest meeting provided a timely opportunity to align these parallel efforts, ensuring that the final months of the project are dedicated to producing high-quality reporting that accurately reflects the technical advancements achieved with our AI-powered, secure 6G network orchestration.

What happened recently

• General Plenary Meeting in Bucharest: In November, the RIGOUROUS partners met in Romania. This session was dedicated to coordinating the final phase of the project, reviewing the status of the ongoing tasks, and resolving the final integration challenges to ensure a smooth conclusion.
• Focus on Final Deliverables: The consortium is actively working on the final set of documents, specifically D1.3, D5.3, and the WP6 series. These documents are currently being drafted and reviewed to ensure they effectively encapsulate the project’s findings, technical impact, and future potential.

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Addressing the Challenges of AI-Driven B5G Networks

The presentation explored the pressing challenges posed by AI-driven network security management in Beyond 5G (B5G) infrastructures, including scalability, dynamicity, interoperability, privacy, and security. These challenges are central to realizing the vision of ubiquitous AI-based analytics seamlessly integrated across the computing continuum—spanning Edge, Fog, Core, and Cloud environments.

To address these issues, RIGOUROUS has developed a model-driven Federated Learning framework designed for the orchestration and management of distributed network intelligence. This framework enables efficient detection and prevention of cyberattacks by coordinating FL-based agents and anomaly detectors across heterogeneous network domains.

Privacy-Preserving and Resilient Network Intelligence

A key aspect of the RIGOUROUS approach is its emphasis on privacy preservation and resilience to adversarial threats. The framework integrates Differential Privacy techniques within the training and deployment of FL agents, thereby safeguarding sensitive information while maintaining model performance. In addition, the system’s architecture supports multi-domain and multi-tenant orchestration, allowing for automated and scalable deployment of AI-based anomaly detection components.

These capabilities collectively enhance the trustworthiness, interoperability, and extensibility of the FL management system, ensuring that the network can respond dynamically and securely to evolving cyber threats.

Contributing to Europe’s Vision for Secure Digital Infrastructures

Through its research and technological developments, RIGOUROUS contributes to advancing Europe’s strategic objectives for secure, robust, and intelligent communication infrastructures. The project’s innovations in integrating Federated Learning, privacy-preserving mechanisms, and AI-driven automation represent a significant step towards the realization of trustworthy and adaptive security for B5G networks.

Participation in ICTC 2025 provided the RIGOUROUS consortium an important platform to disseminate these results, engage with the research community, and foster new collaborations aimed at strengthening the resilience and privacy of future digital ecosystems.

The RIGOUROUS project will host a workshop with its latest research at DefCamp 2025, taking place in November in Bucharest, Romania. During the event, the consortium will showcase recent advancements in AI-driven, privacy-preserving network security and demonstrate Federated Learning-based anomaly detection solutions tailored for Beyond 5G (B5G) environments. This participation will provide an opportunity to engage with the European cybersecurity community, exchange technical insights, and highlight the project’s contributions to building more resilient and trustworthy network infrastructures.

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Project Highlights

As summer draws to a close, the RIGOUROUS project continues to make strong progress. It is once again time for our regular update, sharing the latest milestones on our journey.

On the development front, we are proud to announce that we have entered the system integration phase, a pivotal stage where all our work begins to converge. Our focus is now on uniting the many individual components into a single, cohesive RIGOUROUS platform. This transition marks the shift from building separate tools to shaping a truly integrated framework, capable of addressing complex challenges.

And with that, let’s move on to the main topic of this newsletter!

Our Progress So Far

Following the successful conclusion of Work Package 3, RIGOUROUS has shifted into its system integration phase. With our core components for security orchestration, trust management, and deployment now reaching maturity, our focus has moved to combining these assets into a seamless and interoperable platform.

At this stage, the work involves interconnecting the innovative tools developed across the RIGOUROUS project to create smooth, end-to-end operational flows. The aim is to move beyond evaluating modules in isolation and instead validate how the system performs as a unified whole. This process spans the full lifecycle of secure network operations, from human-centric policy definition, secure service onboarding, AI-driven threat detection to automated mitigation using the comprehensive capabilities of the RIGOUROUS framework.

This ambitious integration effort is essential for demonstrating the platform’s real-world effectiveness. By testing the unified system against realistic and demanding use cases, we can ensure that RIGOUROUS a robust, intelligent, and resilient security platform designed to protect and enable the 6G networks of the future.

What happened recently

• The project has officially entered the system integration phase, where individual tools for security orchestration, trust management, and deployment are now being connected into a single platform.

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Project Highlights

The RIGOUROUS project continues to evolve, recently reaching several key checkpoints. A major highlight was our participation in the EuCNC 2025, where we made several presentations. The event was a great success, allowing us to share development status and results and engage with the wider 6G community.

On the development front, we are proud to announce another significant milestone: the official conclusion of WP3. This marks the culmination of months of dedicated research and development, bringing a crucial phase of our technical work to a successful close and propelling us to the next challenge!

Our Progress So Far

The RIGOUROUS project has reached a major milestone with the successful conclusion of Work Package 3 (WP3). This crucial phase was dedicated to building and testing the very heart of our framework: the tools for automated security orchestration, trust management, and secure deployment across multiple domains. The extensive work from this period, covering everything from initial prototypes to final performance evaluations, has been consolidated and documented in our keystone D3.

Our progress was driven by a commitment to Human-Centric Security. We developed intuitive tools that allow for better privacy management and streamlined, secure onboarding of new 6G services. These human-centric designs provide the foundation for our automated systems. At the core of the architecture lies the:

AI-Driven Security Orchestrator

An intelligent engine that dynamically manages and enforces security policies across the entire network, from IoT devices to the cloud. To guide its decisions, we implemented a Zero Trust approach through a smart security framework that continuously evaluates the trustworthiness of all network components, enabling rapid and automated responses to threats.

A key capability brought to life in WP3 is End-to-End 6G Slicing. This powerful feature allows our orchestrator to dynamically create isolated and secure network channels. These “slices” can be used to protect critical communications or to quarantine malicious traffic, effectively neutralizing threats without disrupting legitimate users.

What happened recently

• The RIGOUROUS team was excited to participate in the EuCNC 2025, one of the year’s flagship conferences on future communications systems and networks. We welcomed many visitors to our project booth, where we showcased the significant progress made in the project. The key RIGOUROUS Use Cases were on full display, each brought to life through a dedicated live demonstration of our latest developments. The summit was an invaluable opportunity to share our results and connect with the wider 6G community.

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Project Highlights

It is now time for our first edition of RIGOUROUS Newsletter of 2025! Having just finished the second year of RIGOUROUS progress, we are putting the finishing touches on previous work. The team is getting ready for the new, and last, phase of technical development.

To start off, we have news! RIGOUROUS will be present at EuCNC 2025, with new demos to showcase the great work done by our researchers. For this edition, we will be cooperating with other 6G-focused projects in a joint venture. More info to come in future RIGOUROUS Newsletter editions, so stay tuned!

Our Progress So Far

Recent efforts in the RIGOUROUS project have been focused on defining the final reference architecture. This is a crucial step in ensuring a robust and well-structured framework. This work involves carefully gathering and solidifying, both functional and non-functional requirements from all partners and entities involved. These are, essentially, what the system must do and how well it must perform. These requirements serve as the foundation for the architecture, guiding its development in this phase and ensuring consistency across components.

A key milestone in this process is Deliverable 2.3, which outlines the results of the technical requirements collection. This deliverable aims to provide a list of these requirements and describe how they contribute and shape RIGOUROUS’ architecture. It ensures that all necessary aspects relating to the system’s capabilities are covered.

Additionally, this deliverable introduces a high-level, final design of the architecture. It details both proactive and reactive flows, how the system anticipates and responds to various scenarios. The requirements are also mapped to specific functional blocks, which define different parts of the system and their interactions. By systematically linking these elements, the project ensures that RIGOUROUS is built on strong, well-documented foundations.

At the time of writing, Deliverable 2.31 (D2.3) remains an active work in progress. With these efforts, RIGOUROUS is advancing toward a well-structured, future-proof system that will ensure the resilience of 6G against evolving cyber threats.

What happened recently

• Chafika Benzaid, Nawal Guerd, Nour El Houda Rehouma, Khaled Zaraoulia, and Tarik Taleb published the work A Multi-Layered Zero Trust Microsegmentation at IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)
• Somayeh Kianpisheh, Chafika Benzaid, Tarik Taleb published the work Multi-Model based Federated Learning Against Model Poisoning Attack: A Deep Learning Based Model Selection for MEC Systems at IEEE Global Communications Conference
• Somayeh Kianpisheh and Tarik Taleb published the work Collaborative Federated Learning for 6G With a Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Controlling Mechanism: A DDoS Attack Detection Scenario in IEEE Transactions On Network and Service Management
• Pablo Fernández Saura, José M. Bernabé Murcia, Emilio García de la Calera Molina, Alejandro Molina Zarca, Jorge Bernal Bernabé, Antonio F. Skarmeta Gómez published the work Federated network intelligence orchestration for scalable and automated fl-based anomaly detection in B5G at CMC Computers, Materials & Continua
• RIGOUROUS presented at FIDAL Webinar 2024 with the presentation “Advancing Public Protection and Disaster Relief: Innovation Examples from the SNS Community“, where present different typologies of PPDR technologies that are currently being explored within the different projects

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Project Highlights

With the holiday season fast approaching, it is also time for another update on project RIGOUROUS! Work has been proceeding smoothly, and the team is getting ready for a new year of research and innovation. To finish off 2024, we have a deliverable from WP5 – which is responsible for Integration, testing and validation – coming soon, which we will be showcasing in this edition of our RIGOUROUS Newsletter.

Our Progress So Far

Deliverable D5.2 focuses on Platform Integration and In-Lab Testing and follows up on the foundations laid out on the previous deliverable, D5.1. Whereas D5.1 focused on detailing the RIGOUROUS toolkit assets, D5.2 provides an in-depth view of how these assets are developed, deployed and integrated into a cohesive system, and outlines how the solution is to be validated through in-lab testing.

Given that the complete toolkit is still under development, the integration activities have been divided into two phases, and right now we are focusing on the first phase, centered on a specific subset of assets, named Prototype 1. It includes components demonstrated at the EuCNC event, which was showcased in RIGOUROUS Newsletter #6, back in June.

Prototype 1 is built upon a subset of assets from the RIGOUROUS architecture, each providing an essential feature in order to enable RIGOUROUS functionality:

Human-Centric Privacy risk management for DevSecOps

Aligned with the principles of privacy-first software development, the Privacy Quantifier (PQ) component is being integrated to empower individuals with control over their data. Following this human-centric design approach, the PQ provides a privacy score based on a report with privacy guidelines during software development, categorizes data into privacy-based categories, identifies security threats, and detects malicious applications. The framework aims to enhance the privacy level of applications before their deployment on OpenSlice network services.

Onboarding Tools

The Onboarding Tools enable users to onboard network applications in a user-friendly, human-centric manner. Once onboarded, applications become accessible in the service catalog, where users can browse and order them. Applications can also be categorized based on their security and privacy levels, with appropriate tags for easy identification. Additionally, some applications are customizable by end users — such as choosing specific encryption schemes or enforcing log redaction for auditing in PPDR scenarios — enhancing their adaptability to various use cases.

Trust Evaluation & Enabler

On detection of any violations, the Trust Manager analyses the logs of the affected network functions and detects the source and destination, as well as the severity, of the attack. Then, based on the severity and repetition of the attack, the trust manager generates trust scores. The Trust Manager will notify the decision engine when the trust score of a network entity is below a certain threshold, triggering it to take mitigation action.

AI-based Orchestration

The Security Orchestrator is in charge of deploying configuration to enablers from the application of policies. It communicates with other related components that help in the application of those configurations, such as the Intent-based Security Manager (Which is in charge of translating medium-level policies into low-level configuration messages and check if any policy creates a conflict with any other policy), or the System Model, that provides a database for storing information related to the application of configurations in the target components. It also communicates with most of the other RIGOUROUS components, in order to select a suitable configuration based on data such as trust scores, which is then sent to be applied on the target components.

Slice Manager

The SM is a core component of the RIGOUROUS project architecture, developed as a functional prototype to enable E2E network slicing in multi-tenant, multi-domain 5G and 6G infrastructures. Its main goal is to offer an adaptive, interoperable, and flexible network slicing solution for multi-domain 6G deployments, with a focus on isolating harmful traffic in a low-priority slice to protect legitimate users and services from cyber-attacks.

Network Self-Protection

The NSP is a software-based flow agent designed to provide advanced traffic classification and control within the software data path segment of 5G and beyond multi-tenant networks. This segment connects virtual networks across shared physical infrastructure, making it essential for multi-tenant environments.

Holistic Security & Privacy Framework

The Holistic Security and Privacy Framework (HSPF) is a Federated Learning-based framework to perform network anomaly detection over any application in cloud-native environments.

Privacy-preserving Federated AI for Anomaly Detection

The main functionalities/capabilities of this asset are the following:

• Anomaly Detection capability: Using a deep autoencoder, each flow is targeted as anomalous or not based on a certain error threshold calculated in the training phase. The flow features are sent to the Attack Classification Engine if it is detected as anomalous.
• Attack Classification capability: Each flow received by the Anomaly Detection Engine is classified as one of the known attacks from the training datasets used. If the confidence falls below a certain threshold, which can be specified in the configuration, the flow is classified as Unknown, indicating the possibility of a zero-day attack (to be assessed later by a human security administrator).
• Standard reporting capability: For each flow detected as anomalous and classified into an attack class, the asset generates an alert containing all critical information.

• Automatic deployment and configuration capability: Each module of the asset can be launched automatically and can be automatically configured. This allows the Security Orchestrator to seamlessly orchestrate each of them based on the infrastructure needs at any given time.

AI-Driven Decision Making

The AID module plays a critical role in the RIGOUROUS architecture by providing advanced threat assessment and decision-making capabilities. It acts as a central component in analyzing security threats and orchestrating response actions based on real-time risk assessments. The AID module receives threat indicators and probability metrics from external classifiers and refines this information into actionable decisions, enhancing the architecture’s capability to detect and mitigate potential security risks dynamically.

Threat Risk Assessor

The current version of the TRA, in prototype 1, calculates a risk score directly related to a single anomaly object that concerns a network asset containing one or more vulnerabilities – hence the corresponding CVEs. As work in progress, heuristic methods for threat risk score are being assessed. In this way the TRA would do a best effort to yield a risk score even in the absence of a CVE related to a threat.

SOAR Solution – Resource Inventory, Security Detection & Planner

The UWS Security, Automation, Orchestration, and Response (SOAR) asset, comprising three software components aimed at establishing a cognitive self-protection loop for 5G/6G multi-tenant network infrastructures under cyberattacks, such as botnet-driven DDoS attacks. The SOAR components have three main responsibilities: Attack Detection, Holistic Infrastructure View and E2E Path Calculation.

Encryption as a Service (EaaS)

Within the RIGOUROUS architecture, EaaS’ primary role is to facilitate cryptographic processes, particularly for resource-constrained devices. EaaS ensures secure communication and data confidentiality across the integrated system by providing robust encryption services. The framework enables secure communication between IoT devices, microservices, and back-end systems, and integrates with other security-focused assets.

What happened recently

• Pedro R. Tomas, Luis Rosa, Andre S. Gomes & Luis Cordeiro published the work A Holistic Security Approach to Protect Cloud-Native Applications at FTC 2024 – Future Technologies Conference 2024 – SAI Conferences
• Pedro R. Tomas, Pedro Felix, Luis Rosa, Andre S. Gomes & Luis Cordeiro published the work A novel approach for continual and federated network anomaly detection at FTC 2024 – Future Technologies Conference 2024 – SAI Conferences
• The paper Enhancing Federated Learning with Homomorphic Encryption and Multi-Party Computation for improved privacy, by Pedro Tomás, Samira Kamali Poorazad, Chafika Benzaıd, Luis Rosa, Jorge Proença, Tarik Taleb, and Luis Cordeiro has been accepted for publication at IEEE Future Networks World Forum (FNWF) 2024
• The paper A Novel Buffered Federated Learning Framework for Privacy-Driven Anomaly Detection in IIoT, by Kamali Poorazad, Samira, Chafika Benzaid, and Tarik Taleb has been accepted for publication at IEEE GLOBECOM 2024 Conference
• OneSource presented a Training Session on cyber defence technologies and Machine Learning (ML) techniques being explored by DeepGuardian in the scope of RIGOUROUS Project at 4th CyberHOT Summer School. where crucial aspects of cybersecurity were addressed.
• OneSource was part of a workshop on “Smart Networks and Services Innovation to Fulfil PPDR Needs” in the scope of RIGOUROUS Project Use Case “PPDR IoT Situational Awareness platform”, at PSCE & 6G-IA SNS PPDR Workshop.
• The paper “Privacy-preserving Attribute Based Credentials for 6G networks”, has been accepted and presented at the “Symposium On Security In Future Networks” of the IEEE Future Networks World Forum (FNWF) 2024 conference
• PRIVATEER has published a white paper with proposed KPIs/KVIs related to security.
• Jimena Andrade-Hoz, Jose M. Alcaraz-Calero, Qi Wang published the work Handling Imbalanced 5G and Beyond Network Tabular Data Using Conditional Generative Models at IWCMC 2024 International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing
• Jimena Andrade-Hoz, Jose M. Alcaraz-Calero, Qi Wang published the work Multi-layer Multi-technology Firewall Optimisation in Beyond 5G and Pre-6G networks Using Machine Learning Classifiers at CSNDSP 2024 14th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing
• Jimena Andrade-Hoz, Qi Wang , Jose M. Alcaraz-Calero published the work Infrastructure-Wide and Intent-Based Networking Dataset for 5G-and-beyond AI-Driven Autonomous Networks at MDPI Sensors
• Jimena Andrade Hoz defended the PhD Thesis “AI-Driven Self-Optimisation of Network Control Functions in multi-tenant Beyond 5G Networks” in October 2024, at the University of the West of Scotland
• Pablo Benlloch Caballero defended the PhD Thesis “AI-Driven Predictive Intelligence for Detection and Early Warning of Unseen Cyberthreats in Next-Generation 6G Networks” in October 2024, at the University of the West of Scotland
• RIGOUROUS was present at FUSECO FORUM 2024 with the presentation 6G Computing Continuum New Security and Trustworthy Challenges, where the project, along with most of its activities, was presented.

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Project Highlights

As summer draws to a close, we approach a significant milestone for RIGOUROUS — our 18th month of progress. This marks the completion of another key phase in the efforts to enhance 6G networks and is highlighted by several major deliverables. It’s also time for our periodic report, providing a comprehensive update on our journey so far.

First of all, the Call for Papers for the 2nd Workshop on Beyond current 5G Architecture for 6G Service and International Cooperation Workshop just ended on the past September 10th. The workshop is aimed at discussing the emerging 5G enablers towards holistically rethinking 6G to understand the Challenges, Opportunities & Standardization Imperatives and define the way forward and immediate next steps to ensure ubiquitous adoption of 6G globally, being supported by EU SNS projects RIGOUROUS, HORSE, 6GSOC, and 6GCloud.

Now onto the main topic of this newsletter!

Our Progress So Far

During the first 18 months, the project has defined a methodology for collecting and defining the high-level requirements, defining the first architecture of RIGOUROUS, including the main functional blocks, workflows, and services as well as the use cases and threat scenarios specifications. The project has devised, designed, and implemented the first proof of concept implementations of the enablers and assets being investigated for coming up with a Multi-domain model-based automated security orchestration, trust management, and deployment.

In addition, the project has delivered the first results of the innovative AI-powered mechanisms to enable federated cross-domain analytics for anomaly detection (With privacy protection and resilience to adversarial attacks), dynamic and automated service composition mechanisms which are based on a hybrid scheme combining AI with rules-based systems, to detect and resolve the interconnection problems (interoperability and/or security, privacy and trust mismatches) among components that are attempting to interoperate, and which are not known in advance. Besides, the project has delivered the first AI-driven mechanisms for automated decision-making for the proper mitigation as well as the enablers to achieve a fully functional close control loop for automated security mitigation against cyber-attacks. Furthermore, the project has designed the methodology for testing and integration, accomplished the first set of in-lab experiments, and delivered described the results of the first implemented prototype and inlab testing.

As of M18, we successfully concluded the first phase of our Integration efforts. This milestone marks significant progress, with the following key components delivered as part of this cycle:

• HSPF – Injection Mechanism, a Mechanism to inject sidecar containers into Kubernetes PODs
• HSPF – Network Traffic Collector, which enables the collection of network traffic from a specific network interface.
• HSPF – Reporting Interface, used to report network traffic anomalies and related KPI metrics.
• TRA – Threat Risk Assessor, which provides risk-scoring impact values for detected threats.

To highlight our integration capabilities among the different components, we have produced two demonstrations that simulate key scenarios showcasing RIGOUROUS in action. The first one focuses on our Public Protection and Disaster Relief Use Case, and shows how an application being deployed – whether it attempts to attack the infrastructure or suffers a component failure – has its anomalous behavior detected. The anomaly is then sent to the Security Orchestrator, which swiftly applies policy accordingly, from a preset map of anomalies->policies.

Our second demonstration centers around the RIGOUROUS Platform Validation Use Case, showcasing how we integrate security seamlessly into the development lifecycle. In this scenario, a DDoS attack targets a virtual machine (VM) in the UWS cloud. The attack is detected by the NFM component at UWS, which reports it to the E2E planner at ORO, and also to the Security Orchestrator (SO). As with the previous demo, the SO selects the security policy to be applied and sends it to the SM at UWS for enforcement.

You can see RIGOUROUS in action on our YouTube channel, with videos showcasing these two demonstrations!

We are also proud to announce the significant research output from our team, with 28 peer-reviewed publications in total, including 15 presentations at international conferences and 13 articles in prestigious journals. In addition, we successfully published 4 articles in high-impact Q1 journals such as ComNet and the Journal of Network and Computer Applications. Furthermore, 4 conference papers were presented at CORE-ranked conferences, with 3 of them achieving a ranking of B or higher.

What happened recently

• Antonio Matencio Escolar, Jorge Bernal Bernabe, Jose Maria Alcaraz Calero, Qi Wang, and Antonio Skarmeta published the work Network slicing as 6G security mechanism to mitigate cyber-attacks: the RIGOUROUS approach at the IEEE 10th International Conference on Network Softwarization
• Alberto Robles-Enciso and Antonio F. Skarmeta published the work Adapting Containerized Workloads for the Continuum Computing in IEEE Access, vol. 12
• Amir Javadpour, Forough Ja’fari, and Tarik Taleb published the work Encryption as a Service: A Review of Architectures and Taxonomies in Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS 2024)
• Amir Javadpour, Forough Ja’fari, Tarik Taleb, Chafika Benzaïd, Luis Rosa, Pedro Tomás, and Luis Cordeiro published the work Deploying Testbed Docker-based application for Encryption as a Service in Kubernetes
• Amir Javadpour, Forough Ja’fari, Tarik Taleb, Chafika Benzaïd, Yang Bin and Yue Zhao published the work Encryption as a Service (EaaS): Introducing the Full-Cloud-Fog Architecture for Enhanced Performance and Security
• Contributions from RIGOUROUS in the Software Software Networks Working White Paper
• Contributions from RIGOUROUS in the SSNS JU 6G Architecture WG White paper

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Project Highlights

The RIGOUROUS project continues to evolve and is nearing major deliverable checkpoints. Learn about our latest completed implementations, and preliminary results in various areas, right below!

In this recent phase, the major deliverable D3.2 is nearing completion, presenting an initial implementation and preliminary result for each of the following tasks:

Task 1: Human-Centric Security, Privacy Modeling, and Onboarding:

A comprehensive system model was developed, aiming to provide a detailed understanding of the system and its functionalities and interactions. Security policy models were defined to process Medium-level Security Policy Language (MSPL) policies, ensuring the security of the RIGOUROUS infrastructure. 

The RIGOUROUS architecture for privacy modeling and quantification in data management involves a systematic method to quantify service privacy levels using a declarative, service-specific privacy manifest. This manifest is analyzed by a privacy quantification model employing predefined metrics and algorithms, customizable according to user preferences or regulatory standards. The architecture accommodates service updates, maintaining a privacy benchmark as the service evolves and empowering users to manage their privacy.

The onboarding process, based on OpenSlice, focuses on security, privacy, and human-centric design. It contains several components, such as:

The network applications allow dynamic mutation of network services using moving target defense (MTD) techniques to increase resilience and reduce the attack surface. 

Task 2: AI-Driven Cross-Domain Security and Privacy Orchestration in IoT-Edge-Cloud Continuum:

UMU-developed security orchestrator, enhanced in the RIGOUROUS project to utilize AI for decision-making across various network layers (…) A policy-based approach standardizes security management in complex 5G infrastructures by defining security requirements clearly and enhancing system consistency. This comprehensive process ensures effective orchestration and enforcement of security policies across different network segments.

The IoT device bootstrapping specification outlines how IoT devices connect to a network for authentication and secure connection setup, as well as how they obtain long-term credentials securely

Trusted Application Onboarding: Applications disclose how they handle data, especially private data, allowing for the creation of different versions of the same application with varying privacy features or different applications providing the same function with different privacy characteristics.

Task 3: Zero Trust and Smart Security Management:

Trust Evaluation and Trust Enabler Service Framework (TESF) for the Beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G Systems: A standalone system is developed to perform security/trust evaluations and assign trust scores based on security evaluation results (related to deviations from expected/specified standard behaviors. These trust scores help network and management entities make timely decisions during network operations and orchestration to mitigate network risks and threats. 

Task 4: End-to-End Multidomain Multi-Tenant 6G Slicing:

To secure network slices across different domains, security agents and slice controllers are essential. Security agents monitor and manage network elements, collect data from devices for security decisions, and enforce security measures from the orchestrator. Security slice controllers create and implement channel protection policies for network slices as directed by the security orchestrator.

What happened recently:

• RIGOUROUS was present with its booth at EuCNC 2024, which focused on all aspects of telecommunications ranging from 5G deployment and mobile IoT to 6G exploration and future communications systems and networks, including experimentation and testbeds, applications, and services. The four Use Cases were on display, each with an individual demo.
• RIGOUROUS co-organized the 2nd International Workshop on Intelligent Cloud Continuum for B5G Services, co-located with IEEE ICC 2024. This event addressed the challenges and opportunities in the realm of cross-domain cloud continuum scenarios and Beyond 5G applications & services and featured an Interactive Session with paper presentations.
• Antonio Matencio Escolar, Qi Wang, and Jose Maria Alcaraz Calero published the work Enhancing Honeynet-based Protection with Network Slicing for Massive Pre-6G IoT Smart Cities Deployments in the Elsevier Journal of Network and Computer Applications
• Pablo Fernández Saura, José M. Bernabé Murcia, Emilio García de la Calera Molina, Alejandro Molina Zarca, Jorge Bernal Bernabé and Antonio F. Skarmeta Gómez published the work Federated Network Intelligence Orchestration for Scalable and Automated FL-based Anomaly Detection in B5G Networks in the IEEE Future Networks World Forum (FNWF) Conference
• Somayeh Kianpisheh and Tarik Taleb published the work Collaborative Federated Learning for 6G with a Deep Reinforcement Learning based Controlling Mechanism: A DDoS Attack Detection Scenario in the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management Journal
• Chafika Benzaid, Fahim Muhtasim Hossain, Tarik Taleb, Pedro Merino Gomez, and Michael Dieudonne presented the work A Federated Continual Learning Framework for Sustainable Network Anomaly Detection in O-RAN at the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC 2024)
• Ioan Constantin highlighted the project in a talk presented at DefCamp Cluj-Napoca

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Project Highlights

The project is continuing the development of novel methods to enhance 6G networks, now with focus on the preparation of the first major project milestone, corresponding to the project middle term.

In the last period, several major deliverables were produced, whose approaches are not being refined towards a clearer definition of interfaces, functions, components and most relevant: use cases and applications. This is present in D2.2, which addresses specifications of the RIGOUROUS project’s use cases and the validation scenarios as well as the use cases functional requirements.

We adopted a comprehensive approach to achieve several objectives. In the area of defining and refining the use cases of RIGOROUS, we aimed to establish a clear and precise understanding of the practical applications of the project. We then shifted our focus to conducting an in-depth analysis of the security threat
landscape related to the project’s use cases. This involved identifying and organizing potential threats into coherent scenarios, providing a comprehensive view of the security challenges faced. Within each scenario, we explored the major security challenges in detail, aiming to gain a nuanced understanding of the security aspects inherent in the project. Effectively, our work focused in a detailed review of the following four distinct use cases, each offering high-level descriptions and associated security threat scenarios.

Use Case I – RIGOUROUS Platform Validation: Focused on validating the RIGOUROUS platform’s capability to enhance the flexibility of telecommunication infrastructures, this use case centers around the Orange 5G Romania lab. Addressing the transformative challenges of 6G, it employs a DevSecOps approach to integrate security seamlessly into the development lifecycle. Specifically addressing “Protecting 6G Services against Cyber Threats,” it assesses performance through three threat scenarios, confirming the platform’s effectiveness in identifying, responding to, and mitigating complex cyber threats to vital 6G infrastructure.

Use Case II – IoT-Based Smart City Platform: This use case revolves around a cloud-native IoT platform designed for smart city applications. Leveraging docker-based micro-services and Kubernetes, it manages diverse IoT data from gateways, supposedly spread across the city, supporting various communication technologies and devices. Security threat scenarios, including unauthorized communications and economical denial of service, are meticulously examined, emphasizing correlations with critical assets.

Use Case III – Utilities Management and Security (WINGS): This in-depth examination focuses on facilities management with a specific emphasis on data security. Threat scenarios encompass data security, DDOS attacks, code, and data injection, along with challenges posed by outdated systems. Asset correlations are highlighted to provide a comprehensive understanding.

Use Case IV – Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR): Detailing scenarios involving PPDR scene and team provisioning, potential intrusions, and disclosure of device vulnerabilities. This case highlights the correlations between assets and critical elements that are at risk.

In order to enable the Use Cases, we created a mapping between the use cases and the RIGOUROUS’s high-level architecture, on one hand, and the project’s assets on another hand is provided. The RIGOUROUS project’s identified use cases create a strategic framework to address evolving telecommunications and security challenges, with each pivotal in shaping the project’s comprehensive approach.

For more detail, check D2.2 – RIGOUROUS Use Cases.

What happened recently

• Project had fruitful technical and coordination meetings in Coimbra, hosted by OneSource
• Catarina Silva, Vitor Cunha; João Paulo Barraca, and Paulo Salvador published the work “Privacy-Based Deployments: The Role of DevPrivOps in 6G Mobile Networks”, in the IEEE Communications and Magazine Journal
• Amir Javadpour, Forough Ja’fari, Tarik Taleb, Yue Zhao, Bin Yang, and Chafika Benzaïd published the work “Encryption as a Service for IoT: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions“, at the IEEE Internet of Things Journal
• Tarik Taleb, Chafika Benzaïd, Rami Akrem Addad, and Konstantinos Samdanis published the work “AI/ML for beyond 5G systems: Concepts, technology enablers & solutions“, at the Elsevier Computer Networks Journal
• Amir Javadpour, Forough Ja’fari, Tarik Taleb, Mohammad Shojafar, and Chafika Benzaïd, published the work “A comprehensive survey on cyber deception techniques to improve honeypot performance“, at the Elsevier Computers and Security Journal
• Jimena Andrade-Hoz,Qi Wang and Jose M. Alcaraz-Calero published the work “Infrastructure-Wide and Intent-Based Networking Dataset for 5G-and-beyond AI-Driven Autonomous Networks“, at the MDPI Sensors Journal

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Project Highlights

Since the last newsletter, the project consortia evolved towards the RIGOUROUS vision at a fast pace, with several contributions to research, and milestones met.

Design plan of the multi-domain automated security orchestration, trust-management, and deployment

This milestone consisted in the initial outcomes coming from all the tasks in WP3, including the definition of the first version of the research, design, implementation, and modular testing of the enablers and components aimed to achieve AI-driven multi-domain automated security orchestration, end-to-end slicing, human-centric DevSecOps and zero trust-management for 6G system. It encompassed the activities focused on achieving the project objectives on holistic framework, human-centric DevSecOps, and AI-driven security orchestration.

In particular, we described the initial design and prototyping of the following solutions:

• Human-centric security and privacy modelling and quantification for DevSec operations.
• DevSec user-friendly tools.
• Onboarding specifications for network resources and devices: 
• Adaptive deployment mechanisms by relying on on-the-fly resources provisioning and orchestration.
• Zero-trust security management.
• Enablers to accomplish End-to-End multidomain multitenant 6G slicing.
• Multi-domain security orchestration by applying corrective actions and counter measurements to detected security and privacy breaches to reduce risk.

Design Plan of the AI-driven Anomaly Detection, Decision and Mitigation

We also advanced to produce the first analysis and design of RIGOUROUS’s assets aiming at enabling AI-driven anomaly detection, decision, and mitigation in RIGOUROUS framework. The design of those assets is driven by the necessity of empowering timely detection and mitigation of anomalies to deal with the stringent reliability and availability needs of 5G and beyond (B5G)/6G networks and services. To this end, emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches, including Deep Learning (DL), Federated Learning (FL) and Transfer Learning, are adopted to deliver fully automated anomaly detection, decision-making and mitigation services.

The assets are grouped into six categories according to their functions and the services they provide in the context of anomaly detection, decision, and mitigation in B5G/6G environments. The following six categories are defined:

• The assets that enable collaborative anomaly detection while fostering privacy preservation.
• The assets that provide cognitive security decision-making, orchestration and management services.
• The assets that leverage AI and/or rule-based methods to provide security response and mitigation capabilities.
• The assets offering cutting-edge network flow and topology monitoring services that can be deployed alongside the data plane for effective detection of cyberattacks within a 5G network infrastructure as well as enabling subsequent actions to mitigate threats.
• The assets that strengthen AI robustness and improve privacy preservation; two key requisites to foster trust in AI.
• The assets that facilitate security testing by providing services that enable the simulation of physical spaces by replicating digital twins and creating cyber-range environments.

Each of these categories was carefully analyzed, with an emphasis on the innovations it introduces in comparison to the current state-of-the-art, followed by a detailed description of the asset, elaborating on its functional workflow and the key enabling technologies adopted to implement the asset’s services.

What happened recently

• Project team held a technical meeting in Luxemburg, hosted by RHEA, to discuss the project’s progress and upcoming milestones.
• Deliverables D2.1, D3.1 and D4.1 were produced to the project coordinator

• João Paulo Barraca highlighted the project at an outreach event Cybersecurity: A challenge for SME
• Mojdeh Karbalaee Motalleb, Chafika Benzaïd, Tarik Taleb, Vahid Shah-Mansour, presented Moving Target Defense based Secured Network Slicing System in the O-RAN Architecture at Globecom 2023
• Amir Javadpour, Forough Ja’fari†, Tarik Taleb, and Chafika Benza, presented Enhancing 5G Network Slicing: Slice Isolation via Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning with Optimal Graph Features, at Globecom 2023
• Chafika Benzaïd, Tarik Taleb, Ashkan Sami, Othmane Hireche, presented A Deep Transfer Learning-powered EDoS Detection Mechanism for 5G and Beyond Network Slicing, at Globecom 2023
• Amir Javadpour, Farough Ja’fari, Tarik Taleb, HamidReza Ahmadi, and Chafika Benzaïd presented Cybersecurity Fusion: Leveraging Mafia Game Tactics and Reinforcement Learning for Botnet Detection, at Globecom 2023
• Samira Kamali Poorazad, Chafika Benzaïd, and Tarik Taleb presented, Blockchain and Deep Learning-Based IDS for Securing SDN-Enabled Industrial IoT Environments, at Globecom 2023

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