Research Article
SecControl: Bridging the Gap Between Security Tools and SDN Controllers
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-319-78816-6_2, author={Li Wang and Dinghao Wu}, title={SecControl: Bridging the Gap Between Security Tools and SDN Controllers}, proceedings={Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. SecureComm 2017 International Workshops, ATCS and SePrIoT, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, October 22--25, 2017, Proceedings}, proceedings_a={SECURECOMM \& ATCS \& SEPRIOT}, year={2018}, month={4}, keywords={Software-defined networking (SDN) Network Function Virtualization (NFV) OpenFlow SDN security application SDN controller}, doi={10.1007/978-3-319-78816-6_2} }- Li Wang
Dinghao Wu
Year: 2018
SecControl: Bridging the Gap Between Security Tools and SDN Controllers
SECURECOMM & ATCS & SEPRIOT
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-78816-6_2
Abstract
Software-defined networking (SDN) is a promising paradigm to improve network security protections. A lot of security enhancements through SDN have been proposed. However, current SDN-based security solutions can hardly provide sufficient protections in a real SDN network, due to several reasons: (1) they are implemented at either the centralized SDN controllers or the decentralized network devices, which are subject to a performance limitation; (2) their designs are confined by SDN network characteristics and can only provide limited security functions; (3) many solutions have deployment challenges and compatibility issues. In this paper, we propose SecControl, a practical network protection framework combining the existing security tools and SDN technologies, to produce a comprehensive network security solution in an SDN environment. By employing the capabilities of existing security tools, SecControl is able to perceive the real-time security events dynamically and adjust the protected network environment correspondingly. It can be easily extended with various methods for different security threats. With SecControl, we construct a traditional-security-tool-friendly network security solution for software-defined networks. We implement a SecControl prototype with OpenFlow and evaluate its effectiveness and performance. Our experiment shows that SecControl can cooperate with many mainstream security tools and provide effective defense responses over SDN-supported networks.