Securing GPRS with IPSEC: Experimental assessment

Cellular internet services must grapple with the added security threats posed by the radio transmission, open to eavesdropping. Furthermore, the combination of always-on connectivity and an interface to the public internet means high speed data services has to cope with the same security issues that can be found in the wired environment. In GPRS, confidentiality has been provided only in GGSN-ME by GEA+ algorithms, with algorithms whose strength it is not believed adequate for corporate/governmental requirements. To provide an adequate level of security, it is often argued to employ IPSec over the GPRS framework. We provide experimental evidences that IPSec is a viable solution to provide the desired level of security. In particular, the overhead generated is tolerable where high sensitive/critical communications take place. We expect that our findings could highlight the GPRS solution as an economic, easily securable, already deployed network on which corporate/governmental infrastructures can rely on.