Overview

Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated. This is partially due to the complexity of the communication networks, and also due to the hetereogenity in their constituent hardware and software. Currently, computer networks have management issues which make complex the configuration of predefined policies. In order to solve them, new technologies such as Software Defined Networks (SDN), which decouples network control from forwarding devices (switches and routers), and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) which proposes a new network architecture where network functions (Firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems, etc) are implemented through software running on general purpose servers. However, mitigation of cybersecurity attacks using emerging technologies such as SDN and NFV is not yet a widely studied area. The objective of this research is identifying and characterizing the main attacks that might target new generation network architectures, and designing strategies allowing a fast deployment of high level security policies in the network through the use of SDN and NFV.