Assisted Monitoring and Security Provisioning for 5G Microservices-Based Network Slices with SWEETEN

5G networks have imposed a drastic shift in how mobile telecommunications must operate. In order to comply with the new requirements, solutions based on network function virtualization (NFV) and network slicing must be carried out. Regarding NFV in particular, the trend towards pulverizing the monolithic software in a microservices-based one carries network management challenges to operators. The deployment and integration of one or more network management software with the managed services is as important as it is delicate, as stringent requirements of 5G applications must be respected. In this paper, we propose SWEETEN as a solution for automating the deployment and transparently integrating network management solutions from different management disciplines, in this case, monitoring and security. Demonstrating its usability through a intelligent healthcare use case, SWEETEN is shown to transparently provide monitoring and security solutions for a complete network slice, enabling compliance with privacy requirements through minimal low-level interventions from the network slice tenant. The results show how SWEETEN integration of monitoring and security disciplines can assist users in guaranteeing the correct operation of their deployments regardless of the underlying software solutions used.