Cyber Resilience of IP/MPLS Core Networks in Saudi Arabia: Hardening, Threat Analysis, and Operational Continuity under Vision 2030

Saudi Arabia’s digital economy increasingly depends on IP/MPLS core networks that aggregate mobile, fixed, cloud, government and industrial traffic. Their importance creates a difficult resilience problem: the core must preserve deterministic forwarding and rapid convergence while resisting control-plane manipulation, data-plane abuse, management compromise, supply-chain weaknesses and operational error. This review synthesises research, standards and Saudi regulatory guidance published from 2020 to 2025 to develop an integrated cyber-resilience framework for national-scale carrier networks. The review examines layered attack surfaces across external routing, MPLS and segment-routing control, provider-edge services, router operating systems, automation platforms, telemetry pipelines and operational processes. It argues that resilience cannot be achieved by perimeter filtering alone. A defensible design combines authenticated administration, infrastructure access controls, route-origin validation, explicit peering roles, control-plane policing, label and interface validation, segmented management, cryptographic agility, continuous telemetry, tested rollback, diverse transport paths and recovery procedures governed by service criticality. The resulting framework links prevention, detection, containment, traffic restoration and organisational learning. It also aligns technical controls with Saudi cybersecurity obligations and Vision 2030 priorities for trusted digital infrastructure. The review concludes that the strongest operating model treats routing correctness, security assurance and continuity engineering as one measurable discipline rather than separate network, security and business-continuity functions [1–4].