5 Ways to Intelligent Network Security with Software-Defined Networking

Today’s businesses compete in a very challenging landscape of network security. From large corporations to small- and medium-sized enterprises, even many start-ups are adopting cloud services. It not only offers the flexibility of resource utilization, but also reduces operational costs, increases data integrity and security, lowers the risk of data unavailability, and tenfold collaborative productivity.

The migration from on-premise to cloud-based infrastructure has resulted in massive changes in network design and security. To support this digital transformation, organizations need advanced tools and support of automation to improve security. In such a situation, software-defined networking could be the optimal solution.

Software-defined networking – Solving network security challenges

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a network architecture that enables centrally and programmatically efficient network configuration, improving network performance and monitoring. With this arrangement, network security operators can easily manage network consistency without being concerned about the underlying network technology.

SDN impacts organizations positively. With the help of this technology, companies now understand the widening threat landscape and real-world challenges of SDN.

SDN and network security

Network defense professionals are looking for innovative ways to protect their organizations from complex security concerns. With SDN, experts have the right opportunity to improve network security. Here’s how:

1. Centralized network control

In a traditional IT environment, network security solutions, such as router and switches, make decisions regarding incoming and outgoing traffic. SDN can centralize the network control, routing the entire traffic using a single controller. It can separate the control plane, forwarding plane, and data plane from each other. This technology gives a clear picture of the network topology and architecture. For network security, SDN can also regulate data packets through a single firewall and improves the data capture ability of IDS and IPS.

2. Simplified configuration

VLAN configuration demands a lot of dedication and sincerity as it offers a highly secured environment for the organizations. The more VLANs a company implements, the more complex it becomes for the professionals managing them.

With the help of SDN, the organizations can automate the VLAN configuration and improve the traceability of these configurations. Along with that, SDN allows dynamic programming and restructuring of network settings, which eventually results in the elimination of DDoS attacks.

3. High-level network policies

The SDN technology offers central management of security policies instead of physically configuring them. This feature enables a network operator to be more flexible and efficient. In addition, organizations are replacing the current management approaches like SNMP/CLI with efficient policy management.

4. Handy Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

Cloud APIs are crucial for SDN controllers and applications. With easy to use APIs, professionals can conveniently manage network resources, enhance the efficiency of IT resources, and keep the vital tools in easy reach.

Also, take a look at Dhananjaya Naronikar’s coverage on cloud security:

5. Additional qualities

SDN comes with automatic quarantine capabilities, which implies that it can automatically isolate malicious code on a network. Though the quarantine capability may be applicable from a selected point to an infected part on the network.

Source: eccouncil.org