Software-Defined Network security embrace virtualizing security functions from the increased innovation of traditional hardware that liable to operate on. The latest creation of SDN security makes automation to grasp better detect abnormality in network traffic and upgrade enforcement of security policies.
Traditional networks are vulnerable to various security threats some of which that cannot get detected easily. SDN can provide security defense solution as its capable of detecting attacks and acting adaptive methods in a quicker manner. Some of the security attacks and potential analyses presented in SDN are:
• Unauthorized Access
• Data Leakage
• Data Modification
• Flooding/Denial of Service attack
• Configuration issue
• System level SDN Security
• Malicious/Compromised application.
• Side channel attack
• ARP Spoofing attack
• Password Guessing or Brute Force
• Traffic Sniffing
• Traffic Diversion
• App Manipulation
• Network Manipulation
Security is the top most major priority plays a vital role in SDN. A primary SDN design does not include any security as its segment, even each SDN layer has its own security concerns, requirements and issues.
SDN features benefit network security to enhance the details of security such as:
• prevention
• detection
• response.
Prevention: Prevention is a process to hold attackers from contacting targets for protection by setting security policies that define who can access whom. This operation needs more careful planning and investigation techniques to minimize the mistakes, because it is possible for security policies to block users or accept malicious ones.
Detection: Detection is a security process to detect network instructions, two types of detection methods are used: 1. misuse detection and 2. anomaly detection. Misuse detection detects the attacks based on known patterns and anomaly detection detect attacks by finding malicious patterns in network traffics.
Response: Response to attacks is a crucial part in defense-in-depth security framework. Traditionally to respond with attacks, users install middle-boxes or reject attack trials to isolate the more compromised hosts to protect other hosts over the network. The dynamic flow control of SDN is used to significantly enhance this process.
An SDN applications have many advantages and yet cause some serious security issues that are broadly classified into eight main divisions such as :
• Nested applications
• Applications abusing SDN internal storage
• Third-party applications and open development environments
• Authentication, Authorization and Accountability
• Exhaustion of resources
• Applications abusing SDN control messages
• Trust establishment and
• Application executing system commands.
To address all the aspects of network security, the SDN technology proposed some open challenges solutions according to the security recommended dimensions, some of them are:
• Vulnerability of communication channel
• Forwarding device attacks
• Threats in control plane
• Man-in-the-middle-monitors
• Data confidentiality
• Access Control
• Authentication
• Non-Repudiation
• Data Integrity
• Availability
• Privacy.
