Be it small or big, organizations are under cyberattacks. A software defined network helps development and operation teams get on top of the threats.

FREMONT, CA: In this modern age, hackers and miscreants are continually seeking ways to exploit organizational data to make a profit. Also, network traffic is steadily increasing in enterprise and cloud computing data centers. Thus, the security operation teams are burdened with tuning security engines for the latest threats. Besides, as the Internet of Things (IoT) evolves, security needs will grow as well. Intelligent incident detection and automated response are some of the ways to bridge the security gap. Security concerns are as real as they get, but there are several benefits to security when it comes to Software Defined Networking (SDN). The enterprises are enjoying improved agility, resiliency, and automated operations management since they have virtualized their environments. Furthermore, the networks are deployed, managed, and secured since the enterprises have moved to SDN.

One of the benefits of SDN is Centralized Intelligence. It is challenging to keep security policies uniform and enforced adequately across the physical network. In SDN, the network and security policies are maintained and managed in the controller. Thus, it becomes relatively easier to distribute and enforce the policies throughout the network. SDN takes control away from the hardware devices, making it easier to avoid proprietary controls and develop tools that can secure the entire system. The comprehensive view increases transparency for analysis and event response, and at the same time, it is easier to identify malicious activity and take measures accordingly.  

SDN makes security scalable and provides benefits of virtualization, such as cost-effective redundancy, agility, and scalability. It eliminates the need for hardware and deployment of proprietary security controls. Further, as the software scales, the security can scale with it. SDN provides flexibility to stop misbehaving segments. It makes it possible to identify malicious actions and take appropriate steps as SDN offers network-wide visibility. For instance, if a malware interferes with the configuration, then it can be locked down or blocked. SDN controllers can be cracked, and attackers can break the network. So, best practices for controller security should be followed at all times. Thus, when it comes to security and SDN, the benefits of SDN outnumbers the risks.