Beyond PS-LTE: Security Model Design Framework for PPDR Operational Environment

Abstract

National disasters can threaten national security and require several organizations to integrate the functionalities to correspond to the event. Many countries are constructing a nationwide mobile communication network infrastructure to share information and promptly communicate with corresponding organizations. Public Safety Long-Term Evolution (PS-LTE) is a communication mechanism adopted in many countries to achieve such a purpose. Organizations can increase the efficiency of public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) operations by securely connecting the services run on their legacy networks to the PS-LTE infrastructure. This environment allows the organizations to continue facilitating the information and system functionalities provided by the legacy network. The vulnerabilities in the environment, which differ from commercial LTE, need to be resolved to connect the network securely. In this study, we propose a security model design framework to derive the system architecture and the security requirements targeting the restricted environment applied by certain technologies for a particular purpose. After analyzing the PPDR operation environment’s characteristics under the PS-LTE infrastructure, we applied the framework to derive the security model for organizations using PPDR services operated in their legacy networks through this infrastructure. Although the proposed security model design framework is applied to the specific circumstance in this research, it can be generally adopted for the application environment.