Network Security Challenges and Countermeasures in SDN Environments

The internet has made everything connected and accessible from anywhere. However, conventional TCP/IP networks are complex and very hard to manage. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is one of the most promising networking paradigms in current and next-generation networks. It promises to change this situation by breaking vertical integration and introduce network programmability. SDN separates control from the network and data plane. The intelligence and brain of the network are logically centralized, and the underlying network infrastructure is abstracted from the application. However, the Control Plane and Data Plane separation opens the door for security challenges and threats. In this paper, we aim to collect, analyze and classify all major security threats and their possible solutions. The security platforms that are used as countermeasures for each attack are described, followed by various security approaches for network-wide security in SDN. As well as classifying security challenges and threats according to different fields, an SDN simulation platform to study and test network performance and attacks countermeasures is also introduced. In short, this paper gathers all the present major SDN security challenges and possible solutions. Furthermore, it studies, classifies and highlights future directions for secure SDN.