DDoS Attack Protection in the Era of Cloud Computing and Software-Defined Networking

Cloud computing has become the real trend of enterprise IT service model that offers cost-effective and scalable processing. Meanwhile, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is gaining popularity in enterprise networks for flexibility in network management service and reduced operational cost. There seems a trend for the two technologies to go hand-in-hand in providing an enterprise's IT services. However, the new challenges brought by the marriage of cloud computing and SDN, particularly the implications on enterprise network security, have not been well understood. This paper sets to address this important problem. We start by examining the security impact, in particular, the impact on DDoS attack defense mechanisms, in an enterprise network where both technologies are adopted. We find that SDN technology can actually help enterprises to defend against DDoS attacks if the defense architecture is designed properly. To that end, we propose a DDoS attack mitigation architecture that integrates a highly programmable network monitoring to enable attack detection and a flexible control structure to allow fast and specific attack reaction. The simulation results show that our architecture can effectively and efficiently address the security challenges brought by the new network paradigm.