ABSTRACT
Software-defined networks is a new paradigm that brings programmability to networking. This is achieved by separating the Control Plane and the Data Plane which also provides more flexibility in managing the networks. However, this also gives rise to certain security issues that need to be addressed. To address the security issues in SDN, many researchers have proposed novel solutions. In thischapter, we will discuss the challenges in SDN security and present an analysis of different approaches presented for implementing security in SDN.
SDN uses multiple network entities, such as applications, controllers, switches, and multiple communication techniques like APIs and protocols, like OpenFlow, at different planes. This makes it difficult to have a single security framework that can be used for the entire SDN architecture. A trust-based approach seems more practical to introduce security at the entire SDN architecture level as it can provide us with a single score that will deem a network entity (application, controller, switch) or the communication between them, to be trustworthy, or otherwise. Thus, the proposed chapter will focus on a detailed analysis of the trust-based approaches proposed earlier.
The chapter will also discuss the role of network monitoring using the existing techniques in the security of SDN in detail. It will then discuss the basis for the use of SDN monitoring to assess the trust in the SDN architecture.
