Motivation

IP services have become an essential part of the way that individuals organise and conduct their lives, that businesses attract and interact with customers; and that governments provide essential services. IP therefore has become of fundamental importance to the function of the world's most developed economies. As a result, the fundamental resilience of the telecommunications infrastructure that enables access to IP-based services has become a key issue to many policy makers.

The purpose of this Question is to develop guidelines to protect key telecommunications centres from disruption due to electromagnetic effects. This work includes protection from lightning damage, from Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) issues and also the effects of High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Electromagnetic (HPEM) attack. The desire was to produce a document set that presented the non-technical/non-expert reader with a guide to existing technical documentaion: these being, for lightning and EMC, documents from the ITU's K-Series of Recommendations (Protection from Interference); for HPEM and HPEM, documents from the IEC TC77 (Electromagnetic Compatibility) SC77C (High Power Electromagnetic Transient Phenomena).

Also, electromagnetic security could involve of information leaks from telecommunication networks by unexpected radio emission from equipment.

The nature of the malicious threats and the corresponding mitigation techniques are similar to those that apply to natural or unintentional electromagnetic disturbances. Thus, the traditional activities of Study Group 5 related to protection against lightning and controlling Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) contribute to the security of the network against malicious man-made threats.

The following Recommendations, in force at the time of approval of this Question, fall under its responsibility:

• None.

Question

Study items to be considered include, but are not limited to:

• Technical requirement for preventing information leaks by unexpected radio emission from equipment and protection of telecommunication centres from attacks using high power radio waves (HEMP, HPEM);
• Mitigation methods such as electromagnetic shielding;
• Methodology for evaluating the protective measures.

Tasks

Tasks include, but are not limited to:

• One or more recommendations on:
  • Basic security requirements for preventing information leakage through electromagnetic emission (Evaluation method, limits etc.);
  • Basic immunity and resistibility requirements against electromagnetic attack including specific immunity test method and limits;
  • Security evaluation methodology for telecommunication installations with/without shielding rooms and cabinets;
  • Security guideline regarding electromagnetic threats;
  • Methodology for mitigation of security threats.
  • Revision of the existing Recommendation

An up-to-date status of work under this Question is contained in the SG 5 Work Program (use URL as shown in the table below).

Relationships

Recommendations:

• K-series

Questions:

• 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 12 and 13/5

Study Groups:

• ITU-T SG 17

Standardization bodies:

• IEC TC 77, IEC SC 77C, IEC JTC 1