On Friday 5th December 2025, the MARE 6G SNS project was presented by its technical Coordinator Professor Xavi Masip at the “Architecting Trust in 6G: Technical Insights from SNS-JU Projects” webinar. The event brought together several ongoing SNS projects to discuss emerging security and trust challenges in the path toward 6G.
During his presentation, Professor Masip introduced MARE’s vision for a novel, software-driven security plane designed to deliver reliable security services across future 6G infrastructures. With the project approaching its first year, he explained how MARE is moving beyond traditional, attack-specific cybersecurity approaches, by creating an open, programmable and modular framework built from “Security Functions.” These Security Functions are composed dynamically from fundamental “DOTs”, which are security assets contributed by partners or external developers, and which can be orchestrated to detect, mitigate and even prevent security incidents.
A key innovation presented was MARE’s pre-assessment ecosystem, an evolution of concepts developed during the HORSE project. This environment uses simulation, emulation and real testbeds to analyse both the impact of attacks and the effectiveness of mitigation strategies before they are deployed. This proactive capability is essential, as 6G’s evolving architecture and continuous introduction of new technologies will expand the attack surface in unpredictable ways.
Professor Masip also presented MARE’s thematic approach to defining 6G cybersecurity challenges, identifying five vulnerability areas and 11 representative attacks, each of which will be demonstrated through dedicated Proof-of-Concepts. This will help the project anticipate the dynamic 6G threat landscape and develop adaptable Security Functions suited for both reactive and proactive responses.
Concluding his talk, Professor Masip emphasised that MARE’s software-based security plane, which will be open, interoperable and easily integrated to network architectures, can be deployed across any component of the emerging 6G architecture, supporting a more secure and trustworthy next-generation network ecosystem.
