G networks will need to handle Multi-domain, multi-tenant and multi-operator scenarios where the security orchestration of services and network functions will face high complexity of scalability, interoperability and security. In particular, 6G networks will need to manage AI-based network functions to support analytics that can be encapsulated as virtual functions that need to be dynamically orchestrated, configured, deployed, decommissioned, migrated and reconfigured on demand. The distributed nature of these scenarios requires a federated learning FL approach to handle AI-based collaborative learning where FL-agents can be deployed in the continuum of any network segment of the network. This paper proposes an AI-based meta-orchestration approach for multi-domain and multi-tenant 6 G deployments intended to choreograph the FLbased AI functions. The meta-Orchestration encompasses diverse phases, including selection of the orchestration strategy, the orchestration graph building and the selection of best AI-based orchestration algorithm depending on the actual context, thereby maximizing the effectiveness of the allocation of the FL-agents. The implementation and performance evaluation to orchestrate FL agents with diverse AI-based algorithms across the continuum proves our approach to detect anomalies using FL in distributed scenarios.

The adoption of 5G technology and beyond introduces advanced capabilities, such as dynamic resource coordination and allocation tailored to specific service and security requirements. To achieve efficient security and network management, service automation and orchestration are essential. This paper presents BASTION, a ZSM-aligned framework for enhanced service and security (meta) orchestration. By leveraging an intent-based, policy-driven approach, it enables the orchestration and enforcement of service and security policies across B5G infrastructures, dynamically adapting to real-time infrastructure conditions. While meta-orchestration capabilities focus on selecting the most suitable orchestration algorithm based on the system’s current status and the received requirements, orchestration capabilities primarily determine what, where, when, and how to enforce services and security policies. Additionally, the modular design and implementation allow for the seamless integration of new security capabilities through plugins, drivers, and managers. This advancement represents a significant step toward building resilient, adaptable, and secure B5G networks capable of meeting the complex demands of modern network environments. The implementation details showcase the full range of capabilities offered by the BASTION framework, highlighting its effectiveness through successful European and national projects. Furthermore, the performance evaluation section provides a comprehensive analysis of orchestration efficiency, breaking down execution times across different phases. In particular, BASTION demonstrates exceptional performance, achieving decision times as low as 1.3 ms and deploying services and security policies, including fully operational dynamic VNFs in less than 30 s, underscoring its ability to deliver fast, scalable, and efficient orchestration in complex environments.

The adoption of the Computing Continuum is characterised by the seamless integration of diverse computing environments and devices. In this dynamic landscape, sharing resources across the continuum is becoming a reality and security must move an step forward, specially in terms of authentication and authorisation for such a distributed and heterogeneous environments. The need for robust identity management is paramount and, in this regard, Decentralised Identity Management (DIM) emerges as a promising solution. It leverages decentralised technologies to secure and facilitate identity interactions across the Computing Continuum. Particularly, to enhance security and privacy, it would be desirable to apply the principles of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI). In this paradigm, users have full ownership and control of their digital identities that empowers individuals to manage and share their identity data on a need-to-know basis. These mechanisms could contribute to improve security properties during continuum resource management operations. In this context, this paper presents the design, workflows and implementation of a solution that provides authentication/authorisation features to distributed zero-trust based infrastructures across the continuum, enhancing security in resource sharing and resource acquisition stages. To this aim, the solution relies on key aspects like decentralisation, interoperability, trust management and privacy-enhancing capabilities. The decentralisation leverages distributed ledger technologies, such as blockchain, to establish a decentralised identity ecosystem. The solution prioritises interoperability, enabling nodes to seamlessly access and share their identities across different domains and environments. Trustworthiness is at the core of DIM, and privacy is also considered, incorporating privacy-preserving techniques that individuals to selectively disclose identity attributes while safeguarding sensitive information. The implementation includes different operations for allowing continuum frameworks to be enhanced with decentralised authentication and authorisation features. The performance has been evaluated measuring the impact for the adoption of the solution. The most expensive task, the self-identity generation, takes only a few seconds (in our deployment) and it is only executed once. Authorisation tasks operate in the millisecond range, which is a totally invaluable time if incorporated into resource acquisition processes in frameworks such as Liqo, used in the scope of FLUIDOS project.

The EU-funded EMPYREAN project (empyrean-horizon.eu) aims to establish a hyper-distributed computing paradigm, leveraging collaborative, heterogeneous IoT devices and federated resources. EMPYREAN focuses on developing technologies for efficient AI workload processing, secure distributed edge storage and cloud-native application development. It will offer open and standardised APIs and use open-source platforms. EMPYREAN's capabilities will be demonstrated through three use cases: advanced manufacturing, smart agriculture, and warehouse automation.

Next generation networks and the strength of the distributed computing paradigm (edge/cloud) are transforming how services are provisioned, mainly when solutions focus on collaboration and aggregation of resources provided by different entities or organisations, that becomes essential to satisfy the most demanding computation and storage service requirements. However, it also entails challenges such as infrastructure and technologies heterogeneity, which directly impacts infrastructure management and especially security, that usually tends to be relegated to a second place. This paper provides a by-default security orchestrator approach to mitigate the above mentioned challenges in distributed edge/cloud computing frameworks. We use an Intent-based/policy-based orchestration paradigm for dealing with heterogeneity, allowing users to request service deployments securely without requiring knowledge about the underlying distributed infrastructure. By-default security orchestration will decide how to provide the requested services, ensuring that they are compliant with the security requirements provided by the user and the ones gathered by the system, locally and from reliable external sources1. We provide design and use-cases based workflows for managing by-default security orchestration in proactive and reactive ways. In the future, it is expected to perform the implementation and validation of the proposed approach inside the scope of the FLUIDOS EU project.1https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog