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Best Practice

Advanced security mechanisms to protect assets and networks: Software-Defined Security

Organisations can now leverage the emerging technologies of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) for implementing security, as opposed to using traditional methods, and outlines some of the benefits that can be realised.​

FOCUS ON: Security, Architecture, Software-Defined Security, Software-Defined Networking, Network Functions Virtualisation,

Sytel Reply

Sytel Reply is part of Reply, a leading Consulting, Systems Integration and Digital Services company specialising in the design and implementation of solutions, based on new communication​ channels and digital media. Sytel Reply UK is the company of the Reply group that is specialised in the Telecommunication, Media and Technology (TM&T) markets in the UK and Ireland.

Sytel Reply, thanks to its in-depth competence and experience, boasts a team of highly skilled professionals with a mission to support clients in managing technology and business disruptions, which they are facing during business transformation and technology innovation programmes.

DOWNLOAD
Software-Defined Security (pdf)

INTRODUCTION

Organisations today are evolving and rapidly adopting new technologies. This has led to redefining the organisational boundaries, but has also increased the risks and the threat footprint of the organisation.

In order for an organisation to be able to protect their resources and mitigate the risks, it has been necessary to deploy solutions that would protect the network from such attacks. In addition to these trends, the evolution of networking technologies has introduced concepts such as SDN and NFV. These advancements can enable organisations to implement security solutions in a different way and maximise efficiency, whilst minimising cost.

EVOLUTION OF SECURITY ARCHITECTURE

Traditional Security Architecture. Today’s approach to implementing security in an organisation has been firstly to identify the potential threat (i.e. DDoS or Malware attacks), then assess the risk by calculating the likelihood of the threat and the impact to the business and lastly define a security solution or control mechanism that can be put in place, in order to detect and mitigate the attack when it happens.

The configuration of the network nodes is complex and following this approach every single device that takes part in the process will have to be pre-configured, even if an attack is not happening and mitigation is not needed. In addition, if an organisation wants to achieve the most effective security design, they usually select to introduce the specific security appliances inline in the network, which can cause delays in traffic processing and forwarding.

Software-Defined Security Architecture. One of the inherent capabilities of an SDN controller is the fact that it has knowledge of the network topology and infrastructure and it provides visibility of the traffic. Since the introduction of the SDN logic and its architecture, the controllers have now evolved and are also offering integrated security functions. The overall model is described as Software-Defined Security (SDSec).

The design of security solutions to protect organisations from DDoS and Malware attacks can drastically change and evolve to a more dynamic and sophisticated implementation.

The mitigation can now be realised in a more dynamic and efficient way:

  • The application can direct the SDN controller to reconfigure the network elements, in order to either divert the traffic to the right network elements.
  • The most interesting implementation characteristic of the mitigation though, is the fact that the mitigation can now be applied dynamically at source of the attack, without necessarily t​he need to fully re-direct the traffic.

Solutions. Most of the network security vendors are evolving their products, in order to integrate with the SDN layer and utilise the concepts of NFV. This will allow organisations that have invested in security products to evolve and incorporate such technology integrations at their own pace. In the case that an organisation is looking to invest in introducing an SDN solution, they should be mindful of the integration of such products with the selected SDN controller, since interoperability between different vendors’ products is not yet mature or standardised.

BENEFITS & OPPORTUNITIES

By leveraging technologies, such as SDN and NFV, and advancing to an evolved security architecture, an organisation can realise benefits and opportunities that were either not possible in the past, or too expensive to be justified.

Overall some of the benefits that can be realised by introducing SDSec in an organisation are the following:

  • Efficient and dynamic mitigation of security threats and attacks
  • Hardware cost reduction
  • Utilisation of existing network appliances
  • Dynamic configuration of existing network nodes for the mitigation of an attack
  • Harmonised view of logical security policies
  • Visibility of information from one source rather than by introducing network probe elements in different locations of the network
  • Integration with sophisticated applications
  • Central management of security

CONCLUSIONS

The evolution of networking through the use of SDN and NFV is introducing tremendous opportunities for organisations to evolve their traditional security architecture and implementation models, realise the benefits of programmability and automation and adopt the Software Defined Security model, in order to respond in a more dynamic, efficient and intelligent way to the continuously increasing security threats that they face today.

SYTEL REPLY’S OFFERING

Through its distinct competencies, Sytel Reply assists clients in realising the benefits and dealing with the impacts of the disrupting technologies on their environments. Sytel Reply leverages real-world experience in SDN & NFV consulting for the TMT market, having worked with global Telco providers and established strong relationships with all major SDN vendors.

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