5G Authentication and Key Management for Applications
Xiaoting Huang, Vlasios Tsiatsis, Anand Palanigounder, Li Su, Bo Yang · IEEE Communications Standards Magazine · 2021
3GPP has finalized the publication of 5G specifications in Release 16, also called 5G phase 2 in 3GPP, which focuses on the enhancements of 5G basis to address more use cases in the 5G ecosystem. In Release 16, 3GPP took into account a variety of vertical markets in 5G, where security requirements and corresponding mechanisms are increasingly in focus. One of the important security features introduced in 3GPP Release 16 is the Authentication and Key Management for Applications (AKMA), which is similar to the Generic Bootstrapping Architecture (GBA) specified in earlier generations, leveraging an operator authentication infrastructure in order to secure the communication between the UE and an Application Function (AF). To help understand the origin and principles of AKMA better, this article first introduces mechanisms specified before 5G, including GBA and Battery Efficient Security for very low Throughput Machine (BEST), then presents the AKMA specification in more detail, and finally summarizes the enhancements of AKMA compared to preceding mechanisms.