I’m excited to share that I’ve begun a secondment at Telefónica Scientific Research in Barcelona — a visit built around one central idea: bringing together expertise from UCD and Telefónica’s research team to push forward the state of the art in network security for Beyond 5G and 6G, powered by Generative AI.
Why This Secondment
As mobile networks evolve toward 6G, the attack surface grows just as fast as the capability. Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) promise flexibility, interoperability, and vendor diversity — but that same openness introduces new security challenges that traditional approaches struggle to keep up with. This is exactly where the opportunity lies: using Large Language Models (LLMs) to help detect, reason about, and respond to security threats in O-RAN environments in ways that weren’t previously possible.
The purpose of this visit, in short, is to:
- Facilitate knowledge exchange between Telefónica Research and UCD
- Advance research at the intersection of Beyond 5G/6G network security and Generative AI
- Explore how LLMs can be integrated into O-RAN-related use-cases
- Collaborate closely with the research team on joint experimental work
- Work toward a co-authored research publication
Meeting the Team
One of the highlights of my first days here was sitting down with Dr. Ferran Diego, who leads the team I’ll be working alongside. We had a great conversation about where our respective research interests overlap, and started sketching out potential directions for our collaboration.
It’s the kind of conversation that reminds you why in-person secondments matter: the back-and-forth of whiteboard sketches and “what if we tried…” moments simply don’t translate the same way over email.
What’s Next
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be:
- Digging deeper into Telefónica’s existing O-RAN security research and infrastructure
- Running joint experiments with the team to test early ideas
- Iterating toward a shared research direction that we hope will culminate in a co-authored paper
I’m looking forward to sharing updates as the work progresses — stay tuned for more on how Generative AI and LLMs are shaping the security of the networks we’ll all depend on in the 6G era.
By, Charuka Moremada, Netslab, University College Dublin
