Coalition of Western Countries Launches 6G Cybersecurity Guidelines
Coalition of Western Countries Launches 6G Cybersecurity Guidelines
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/gcot-6g-cybersecurity-guidelines/
Publish Date: 2026-03-04 11:30:00
Source Domain: www.infosecurity-magazine.com
A coalition of seven governments has launched a set of voluntary cybersecurity and cyber resilience principles for 6G, the next generation of mobile networks.
The Global Coalition on Telecoms (GCOT) was established in October 2023 to set out a shared commitment to support secure, resilient and innovative telecommunication networks.
Founded by Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK and the US, the group was joined by Finland and Sweden during Mobile World Congress 2026.
At the event in Barcelona, GCOT also launched the 6G Security and Resilience Principles with the support of leading industry partners, including AT&T, BT, Ericsson, NVIDIA, Nokia, Qualcomm, Rakuten Mobile, Samsung Electronics and Virgin Media O2 and Vodafone.
While 6G standardization works are still in their infancy, with key industry groups targeting initial commercial rollouts in 2029-2030, GCOT believe broad predictions can be made based on the IMT-2030 Framework and initial 3GPP 6G studies.
For instance, the coalition assessed that 6G will mean that more network functions will be virtualized, that disaggregated architectures and standardized interfaces will enable better visibility for security and better multi-vendor integration and that AI will be supported natively both to improve network performance and enable new user services.
GCOT has developed four security principles and four resilience principles based on these predictions in order to help build 6G standards, covering resilience to cyber and physical attacks, supply chains, and reliability.
The guidelines are also intended as a guide for all relevant stakeholders, according to a statement published by the UK government on March 3.
Rob Joyce, director of mobile access engineering at Virgin Media O2, commented: “Although the commercial launch of 6G networks is some years away, it is helpful to establish at an early stage the principles that will guide the development of 6G and ensure its success.”
