Exploring Security Dynamics in SDN Controller Architectures: Threat Landscape and Implications
Kanwal A. Nizamuddin M. Iqbal W. Aman W. Abbas Y. Mussiraliyeva S.
2024Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
IEEE Access
2024#1256517 - 56553 pp.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) has emerged as a new paradigm for managing heterogeneous networks ranging from enterprises to home network via decoupling the control plane from the data plane. In the traditional networking landscape, these two planes are tightly bound together inside a single appliance. The logically centralized and distributed control plane and programmability offer a great opportunity to improve network security, such as by implementing new mechanisms to detect and mitigate various threats, and also enable security as a service in an SDN paradigm. Due to the ever increasing and fast development of SDN, this paper provides an extensive survey of SDN controllers, SDN-related security threats, and solutions to mitigate the security threats. This study provides a comprehensive survey of 53 SDN controllers from different aspects, including language, architecture, organization, open source, scalability, consistency, reliability, API used, library, and their description. We have also provided a detailed security analysis of SDN architecture with an extensive classification of security threats endangering its different architectural components and the solutions to effectively mitigate them. This paper also identifies challenges and promising future directions on SDN deployment, standardization, implementation, and security issues that should be addressed in this field.
network operating system (NOS) , Openflow , scalability , SDN attacks , SDN controllers , Software defined networking (SDN)
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National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Department of Information Security, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
The City University of New York, Physics and Technology, Bronx Community College (BCC), Department of Engineering, Bronx, 10453, NY, United States
Sultan Qaboos University, College of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Muscat, 123, Oman
Sultan Qaboos University, Department of Information Systems, Muscat, 123, Oman
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Information Systems Department, Almaty, 050040, Kazakhstan
National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)
The City University of New York
Sultan Qaboos University
Sultan Qaboos University
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026