Revving Up the Future: What the Festival of Speed and 5G have in Common

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is the world's largest automotive garden party set against the spectacular backdrop of Goodwood House in West Sussex. Over the course of the three days, over 600 cars and motorcycles, alongside the world's greatest drivers from across the history of motoring and motorsport descend on the West Sussex countryside. Every year, spectators come from far and wide to see how cars and their drivers perform on the infamous, mile-long hill climb, with over 500 cars taking on the challenge.

There is a nice parallel that can be drawn between 5G and the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Much like motor sport, 5G is fast-paced, thanks to its multi-gigabit speed. Motor sport, with its decades of history and well-honed technology stands testament to the feats of human ingenuity. In contrast, 5G is just starting its journey, brimming with potential and poised to revolutionize connectivity. It's for this reason that we felt the Festival of Speed was the perfect setting to hose a Zscaler hospitality event on 12th July to talk about the state of 5G and the opportunities it holds for transforming enterprise connectivity.

5G Challenges

In reality, 5G turned five years old last month, and we should think of it as a technology that is still in its infancy. Much of what we saw up to 2023 can be summarised by slower than expexted rollouts, largely down to the cost of infrastructure and spectrum, as well as delays caused by the pandemic.. Truthfully, the use cases for 5G were yet to fully materialize. The promise of killer applications like augmented reality, virtual reality and remote surgery have yet to be deployed en masse. Hence operators were hesitant to invest when the ROI was uncertain.

However, what we are seeing now in 2024 is that use cases are beginning to mature, especially in IoT, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), and Private 5G areas. Enterprises are starting to see the real world benefits and use cases as opposed to the over-inflated initial hype. And this maturity looks set to continue as standalone (SA) 5G gets fully deployed over time where enterprises can truly start to reap the benefits of edge computing, networking slicing and the huge speeds of the mmWave technology.

Use Cases in the enterprise

Speaking to customers at the event, there was a lot of excitement from organizations in the transport, retail, construction and manufacturing sectors. With many on their industry 4.0 journey, 5G and specifically IoT, FWA, and Private 5G are of great interest due to their ability to drive operational efficiencies. This could include pop-up factories/locations, greater coverage in large indoor/outdoor facilities and where materials like steel and glass degrade Wi-Fi performance, or require a much greater number of Access Points. In contrast, 5G thrives in these types of difficult environments. But it will be a journey, and likely a mixed model of wired, Wi-Fi, and 5G to satisfy the diverse requirements and technical debt in existing cabling and network infrastructure.

So where does Zero Trust come in?

As 5G is rolled out in more and more countries, it will have a huge impact on critical infrastructure, enterprises and consumers. However, the technological advancements of 5G also come with new and heightened cybersecurity risks and attack surfaces. The proliferation of IoT devices connected to 5G networks, such as sensors, cameras, and robots, expands the attack surface of an enterprise. Many IoT devices have limited security capabilities, making them prime targets for exploitation or potentially being used as part of a DDoS attack or botnet; and the higher data speeds and lower latency provide enterprises, but also attackers with new opportunities to launch sophisticated attacks.

With a Zero Trust architecture, there is no notion of implied trust for the growing volume of devices and use cases on 5G. Instead, all devices and users are continuously validated in an approach that enforces least privilege across all the layers of the 5G stack. We recently announced our Zero Trust SIM to the world at our Zenith Live user conference and were able to dig into the technology with our guests.

The Zscaler SIM provides secure Zero-Trust-based connectivity in a cellular format and is designed to enable the secure connectivity of IoT and OT devices that move outside the boundaries of a traditional network infrastructure. Typically, the traffic of mobile devices outside the traditional enterprise perimeter would be out of the control of the IT security teams. By providing organizations with an innovative way to send the traffic of these mobile IoT or OT devices through the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange security platform, they achieve secure bi-directional connectivity from enterprises or their customers and can therefore close a security gap.

By connecting users, locations, applications and now IoT and OT devices through the Zero Trust Exchange Platform, the Zscaler SIM extends zero trust beyond users and protects device and server traffic not only at branches, warehouses and factories, but as well on the move. The new solution is built on the foundations of a Zero Trust architecture, where business policies determine user and device access.

So as we race into the future with the power of 5G, Zscaler is excited to lead the way with our innovative cellular solutions. And as 5G matures, more use cases come to the forefront, propelling us into a new era of connectivity and security.

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