With the continuous development of mobile communication technology, the next generation network presents new features of diversified terminals, huge number of nodes, ultra-high-density deployment of nodes, and coexistence of multiple wireless network technologies. This network architecture takes the fifth-generation mobile communication (5G) technology as the main carrier, and integrates many new techniques including massive Internet of Things (IoT), Device to Device (D2D) communication, Vehicle to everything (V2X) communication, Software Defined Network (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), network slice, and so on, which provides users with high communication quality and diversified services.

Due to the introduction of new features and techniques, 5G supports different types of application scenarios, which makes network security extremely challenging. Firstly, malicious users may modify the network settings, consume network resources, and even deprive legitimate users of normal access. Secondly, malicious network nodes may forge legitimate nodes to provide false network services for users, accomplish illegal transactions, and even steal user assets. Finally, a huge amount of privacy information, like user’s identity, mobility pattern, and health status, are always involved in the data and signaling transmission phase. Revealing such information may sharply hurt the normal life of users, steal users' assets and even threaten their lives. Therefore, it is critical to provide a wide and rigorous secure protection architecture for 5G network.

In order to build a secure protection architecture for 5G network, this Special Issue will invite and collect authentication, privacy preservation, key management and data secure transmission technologies related to the 5G network. Original research and review articles are welcome.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• New access authentication protocol with privacy preservation for 5G network
• New handover authentication protocol with privacy preservation for 5G network
• Lightweight cryptography for massive eMTC and NB-IoT devices
• Fault-resistant batch authentication for massive eMTC and NB-IoT devices
• Privacy-preserving and fine-grained data sharing in 5G network
• Secure device discovery and mutual authentication for D2D communication
• Authentication and privacy protection for edge computing
• Slicing security and privacy protection
• Physical layer security
• AI and Machine Learning for 5G security