An autonomic and policy-based authorization framework for OpenFlow networks

Abstract

The Network Access Control (NAC) management is a critical task, especially in current networks that are composed of many heterogeneous things (Internet of Things) connected to share data, resources and Internet access. The Software-Defined Networking (SDN) simplifies the network design and operation, and offers new opportunities (programmability, flexibility, dy-namicity, and standardization) to manage the network. Despite this, the access control management remains a challenge, once managing security policies involves dealing with a large set of access control rules, detecting conflicting policies, defining priorities, delegating rights, and reacting against network state changes and events. This work presents the HACFlow, a novel, autonomic, and policy-based framework for access control management in OpenFlow networks. HACFlow aims to simplify and automate the network management allowing network operators to govern rights of network entities by defining dynamic, fine-grained, and high-level access control policies. We analyzed the performance of HACFlow and compared it against related approaches.