About

Background & Motivation

Securing the Future of
6G Networks

PAISES-6G is a European research project working to make the next generation of mobile networks (6G) secure, intelligent and respectful of people’s privacy from the ground up. Tomorrow’s 6G won’t just carry data; its antennas will also be able to sense the environment, detect movement and monitor people’s status, almost like a built-in radar. That opens exciting possibilities like checking on a patient at home without any wearable sensors but also real risks about who controls that information. The project is building the safeguards that keep this power in the right hands, letting users stay in control and even make themselves “invisible” when they choose.

To do this, PAISES-6G combines three ideas: artificial intelligence that anticipates cyberattacks before they happen instead of just reacting; “quantum-safe” encryption that will hold up even against future quantum computers; and privacy built directly into the network’s design, so companies and operators can share data without anyone seeing what they shouldn’t. Coordinated by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and funded with €8 million through the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, the project brings together 18 organisations from 9 countries including universities, research centres, major technology firms, telecom operators and specialist SMEs with the goal of turning its results into part of the global 6G standard.

Challenges

Securing the 6G Transformation

The move to 6G is not just an upgrade in speed — it changes what a network can do, and with it, what can go wrong. Networks will run artificial intelligence at their core, manage vast amounts of sensitive data, and even sense the physical world around them. Each of these advances brings real benefits, but also new security and privacy risks that today’s solutions were never designed to handle. PAISES-6G focuses on three challenges, all sharing one principle: in 6G, security and privacy must be built in from the start, not added on later.

1
Securing Distributed,
in-network AI
6G will push artificial intelligence deep into the network to cut latency and handle data closer to where it's generated. The challenge is doing this at massive scale — across surging numbers of devices and multiple operators who don't fully trust each other — while keeping AI models tamper-proof, verifiable, and safe to deploy automatically without human intervention.
2
Delivering Holistic,
Quantum-ready Security
Future networks face threats that today's defences can't handle: increasingly sophisticated AI-driven attacks, and the looming risk that quantum computers will eventually break the encryption protecting our communications. The challenge is integrating diverse, complex security technologies — post-quantum cryptography, quantum key distribution, and real-time AI threat detection — into existing infrastructure, across highly distributed networks, without slowing them down.
3
Protecting Privacy in a Sensing-enabled Network
With ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communications), 6G antennas won't just transmit data they'll be able to "see" the environment, detect movement and locate people. This creates powerful new services but serious privacy risks: who controls that information, and can the network be misused to spy on people? The challenge is embedding privacy by design, so different actors can collaborate and share sensitive data without anyone seeing what they shouldn't, while staying compliant with strict EU rules like the GDPR and the AI Act, and without degrading network performance.
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