Description
Society’s dependence on communication networks for all aspects of day-to-day living; business, education, entertainment etc. makes “the network” a very attractive target for malicious attack, which cyber criminals are only too eager to exploit, attempting to limit or block access to essential services (e.g., healthcare, banking, critical infrastructure etc.), disrupting our daily lives and causing high cost to businesses and individuals. Advances in networking such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) have enabled the network availability and scalability required to support massive global connectivity. With SDN and programmable networks, we introduce flexibility to the control and processing of network traffic, which may be leveraged for in-network security functions. However, as we explore the use of network programmability frameworks and languages such as P4 to accelerate packet processing functions for the flexible and scalable connectivity in next-generation networks, we cannot lose sight of the security of the programmable network itself. Indeed, this flexibility and programmability potentially exposes the network devices to compromise.This talk will explore the opportunities and challenges of programmable network security, developments in the field, and our related research at CSIT/QUB.