As 5G and cloud-native technologies accelerate, mobile communication networks have become critical infrastructure for the digital society—and cyber threats are growing increasingly sophisticated. Recent years have seen multiple network attacks across the global telecom industry that caused communication service interruptions. In the face of complex threats such as malicious intrusion, ransomware, and lateral movement, strengthening proactive defense while ensuring service continuity has become a top priority for operator network security.
Recently, China Mobile partnered with Huawei to push the boundaries of 5G core network security technology. Built on the Unified Protection and Response (UPR) solution, the initiative embeds security capabilities deep within the telecom cloud and core network infrastructure, shifting network defense from traditional perimeter containment to an intrinsic, proactive posture that creates a highly resilient security shield for critical communication services.
Traditional security solutions lack the granular visibility required to detect threats within virtualized and containerized environments. UPR closes this gap with an intrinsic security architecture that spans hosts, VMs, and containers. Leveraging a telecom-service whitelisting mechanism, it detects threats—such as malicious files, anomalous logins, unauthorized processes, and container escape attempts—in real time. Micro-segmentation then restricts anomalous access and prevents lateral propagation, orchestrating a collaborative response from initial detection to precise containment.
UPR is also deeply adapted for the high-reliability and low-latency requirements of telecom core networks. Through fine-grained resource management, service-aware policy enforcement, and unified security administration, it minimizes the impact of security measures on live network performance, ensuring the seamless operation of security controls and communication services.
Currently, UPR has achieved commercial deployment at China Mobile Henan (Henan Mobile), encompassing 130 core network element scenarios via 62 use cases across 8 resource pools. During customer acceptance testing, the solution successfully detected diverse security threats—including OS intrusions, malicious files, reverse shells—while blocking numerous anomalous access attempts. Critically, the impact on key service performance was contained below 3% (UPR Agent resource overhead), validating UPR's security capabilities and application value in complex telecom environments. According to statistics, China Mobile processes 200 million security alerts daily and, as of August 2026, has successfully thwarted over 100,000 large-volume network attacks.
"Cybersecurity isn't just about preventing attacks; it is a critical responsibility to ensure the continuous operation of key communication services and to safeguard user trust," said Zhang Xiucheng, Senior Security Expert at China Mobile. "Henan Mobile will continuously advance innovation in intrinsic security technology, deepen the integration of security capabilities with communication networks, and deliver safer, more reliable communication services for the digital society."
Looking ahead, China Mobile and Huawei will continue to collaborate on 5G core network security technologies, extending UPR's intrinsic security capabilities to a broader range of network scenarios and providing a practical reference for global operators building secure, trustworthy, cloud-native communication networks.