ETSI NFV work targets lawful interception, open source software, cloud-based reliability
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s Network Functions Virtualization Industry Specification Group this week released three new specifications targeting security and reliability for NFV deployments.
ETSI said the new specifications provide guidance on lawful interception implementation in an NFV environment, which would coordinate with regulatory authorities that require telecom operators provide lawful interception capabilities.
“As the obligation to support lawful interception applies irrespective of traffic type, signaling format or network configuration, where a network function is virtualized the corresponding LI function should also be virtualized in such a way as to maintain the flexibility of the virtualization,” ETSI noted.
The new specifications also apply to security features in open source management software, using OpenStack as the first use case. ETSI said this feature tackles OpenStack modules that provide security services, including authentication, authorization, confidentiality protection, integrity protection and logging. This move is said to help in the area of management and orchestration, also known as MANO.
“Open source software is a key building block for many NFV deployments, and can help with many of the goals that ETSI NFV seeks to promote, including accelerated time-to-market and improved interoperability,” explained Mike Bursell, vice chairman of ETSI’s NFV security working group. “To do so effectively requires having a knowledge base of the security features and cryptographic algorithms supported in each relevant code base. This helps shed light on how best to provision and deploy the relevant software and on enhancements necessary to meet NFV security requirements.”
The final newly released specification is focused on reliability, and looks at using cloud and data center techniques in adapting and achieving scalability, efficiency and reliability in NFV environments.
“These techniques are designed for managing shared processing state with low-latency and high-availability requirements,” ETSI explained. “They are shown to be application-independent and can be applied generally, rather than have each VNF use its own idiosyncratic method for meeting these goals.”
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