Zero-Trust Architectures for 5GNFV in Multi-Cloud Infrastructures Design and Evaluation

Amar Gurajapu, Anurag Agarwal, Rajdeep Arora; Vardhan Garimella

doi:10.15662/IJAESIT.2026.0901003

Articles

Zero-Trust Architectures for 5GNFV in Multi-Cloud Infrastructures Design and Evaluation

Amar Gurajapu, Anurag Agarwal, Rajdeep Arora

Network Systems, AT&T, United States

Vardhan Garimella

Intellibus, United States

Abstract

The convergence of 5G and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) across multiple clouds (public, private, and edge) amplifies both capabilities and attack surfaces. Traditional perimeter-based security cannot meet the dynamic, distributed nature of 5G/NFV deployments. I propose “ZT-5G-MF”, a zero-trust framework for multi-cloud 5G/NFV that enforces continuous authentication, authorization, and micro segmentation at each interaction. ZT-5G-MF integrates a trust-broker service, policy-as-code engine, cross-cloud identity federation, and distributed packet-inspecting proxies. In a testbed spanning on-prem VMware, Azure, and AWS, migrating three exemplar VNFs (gNodeB control, UPF, IMS) under 120 policy-checks/sec, ZT-5G-MF achieved:

100 % enforcement accuracy (vs. 84 % with conventional IDS)
3 ms average authorization latency (vs. 1.1 ms baseline)
< 5 % throughput overhead at 10 Gbps load

We detail architecture, implementation, quantitative results, and discuss trade-offs and future directions

Article Information

Journal	International Journal of Advanced Engineering Science and Information Technology (IJAESIT)
Volume (Issue)	Vol. 9 No. 1 (2026): International Journal of Advanced Engineering Science and Information Technology (IJAESIT)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.15662/IJAESIT.2026.0901003
Pages	17-20
Published	February 10, 2026
Copyright	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Open Access	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
How to Cite	Amar Gurajapu, Anurag Agarwal, Rajdeep Arora, Vardhan Garimella (2026). Zero-Trust Architectures for 5GNFV in Multi-Cloud Infrastructures Design and Evaluation. International Journal of Advanced Engineering Science and Information Technology (IJAESIT) , Vol. 9 No. 1 (2026): International Journal of Advanced Engineering Science and Information Technology (IJAESIT) , pp. 17-20. https://doi.org/10.15662/IJAESIT.2026.0901003

References

1. Rose, S., Borchert, O., Mitchell, S., & Connelly, S. (2020). Zero Trust Architecture. NIST Special Publication 800-207.
2. Jain, A., Kumar, P., & Sharma, V. (2022). Secure NFV Orchestration in 5G Networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, 60(4), 78–85.
3. Lee, H., & Kim, Y. (2023). Hybrid-Cloud Security Framework for NFV Workloads. ACM CloudSec Proceedings, 15–27.
4. Miller, D., & Patel, R. (2024). Dynamic Microsegmentation for Multi-Cloud Environments. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 12(1), 102–114.
5. Wang, T., & Zhou, L. (2023). End-to-End Network Slicing across Hybrid Clouds. Elsevier Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 190, 103103.
6. Singla, K., & Gupta, R. (2024). AI-Driven Trust Evaluation for Zero-Trust Networks. IEEE Access, 11, 54321–54334.