When SDN Meets Security: New Opportunities and Challenges
Guofei Gu, associate professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University
Thursday, November 6, 2014
2:30–3:30 p.m.
Goldwater (GWC) 487, Tempe campus [map]
Abstract
Software-defined networking (SDN) is a new networking paradigm that decouples the control logic from the closed and proprietary implementations of traditional network data plane infrastructure. SDN enables researchers to more easily design and distribute innovative flow handling and network control algorithms. We believe that SDN can, in time, prove to be one of the more impactful technologies to drive a variety of innovations in network security. However, to date there remains a stark paucity of SDN security research.
In this talk, Guofei Gu will discuss some new opportunities as well as challenges in this new research direction, and demonstrate with our recent research results. In the first half of the talk, he will discuss how SDN can enhance network security, e.g., by offering a dramatic simplification to the way we design and integrate complex network security applications/services into large networks. Gu will introduce work on FRESCO, a new SDN/OpenFlow security application development framework designed to facilitate the rapid design, and modular composition of SDN-enabled security modules (e.g., for threat detection and mitigation). In the second half of the talk, Gu will discuss some unique security problems inside SDN, e.g., control plane saturation attacks, and introduce our work on AvantGuard to enhance the robustness and flexibility of SDN.
Bio
Guofei Gu is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Before coming to Texas A&M, he received his doctorate degree in computer science from the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are in network and system security, such as Internet malware analysis/detection/defense, software-defined networking security, web and social network security, mobile and Android security, and intrusion/anomaly detection. Gu is a recipient of 2010 NSF CAREER Award, 2013 AFOSR Young Investigator Award, 2010 IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (S&P’10) Best Student Paper Award, and a Google Faculty Research Award. He is currently directing the SUCCESS (Secure Communication and Computer Systems) Lab at TAMU.
