TECHNIQUES TO ENABLE SECURE DATA COMMUNICATION BETWEEN A FIRST NETWORK AND A SECOND NETWORK THAT COMPRISE AT LEAST IN PART A DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

A method to enable secure data communication between a first network of a first network provider and a second network of a second network provider includes: establishing a handover process from a 5G communication environment of a first network to a 4G communication environment of a second network; directing control plane traffic of the data transmission from a security edge protection proxy (SEPP) of the first network to a SEPP of the second network; directing user plane traffic of the data transmission to an access link to the 4G communication environment of the second network and through a GTP-firewall; and providing decrypted control plane traffic to the GTP-firewall, wherein the GTP-firewall performs security measures based on information extracted from the control plane traffic.