October was Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the US. We certainly were aware. In September, IoT cameras were hacked and used to create the largest denial of service attacks to date, well over 600Gbps. On October 21, the same devices were used in a modified attack against Dyn authoritative DNS services resulting in disruption of around 1200 websites. Consumer impacts were widely felt, as popular services such as Twitter and Reddit became unstable.

Open distributed architectures can be used to improve the security of network operators’ rapidly evolving networks, reducing the impacts of attacks and providing excellent customer experiences. Two key technologies enabling open distributed architectures are Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN). Don Clarke detailed NFV further in his blog post on ETSI NFV activities. Randy Levensalor also reviewed one of CableLabs’ NFV initiatives, SNAPS earlier this year.

Future networks based on NFV and SDN will enable simpler security processes and controls than we experience today. Networks using these technologies will be easier to upgrade and patch as security threats evolve. Encryption will be supported more easily and other security mechanisms more consistently than legacy technologies. And network monitoring to manage threats will be easier and more cost-effective.

Open distributed architectures provide the opportunity for more consistent implementation of fundamental features, process and protocols, including easier implementation of new, more secure protocols. This in turn may enable simpler implementation and deployment of security processes and controls. Legacy network infrastructure features and processes are largely characterized by proprietary systems. Even implementing basic access control lists from IP based interfaces varies widely, not only in the interfaces used to implement the control lists, but in the granularity and specificity of the controls. Some areas have improved but NFV and SDN can improve further. For example, BGP Flowspec has helped standardize blocking, rate limiting, and traffic redirection on routers. However, it has strict limits today on the number of rules practically supported on routers. NFV and SDN can provide improved scalability and greater functionality.   NFV provides an opportunity to readdress this complexity by providing common methods to implement security controls. SDN offers a similar opportunity, providing standardized interfaces to implement flow tables to devices and configuration deployment through model-based configuration (e.g. using YANG and NETCONF).

Standardized features, processes, and protocols naturally lead to simpler and more rapid deployment of security tools and easier patching of applications. NFV enables the application of Develop Operations (DevOps) best practices to develop, deploy, and test software patches and updates. Physical and virtual routers and network appliances can be similarly programmatically updated using SDN. Such agile and automated reconfiguration of the network will likely make it easier to address security threats. Moreover, security monitors and sensors, firewalls, virtual private network instances, and more can be readily deployed or updated as security threats evolve.

Customer confidentiality can be further enhanced. In the past, encryption was not widely deployed for a wide range of very good economic and technical reasons. The industry has learned a great deal in deploying secure and encrypted infrastructure for DOCSIS® networks and also radio access networks (RANs). New hardware and software capabilities already used widely in data center and cloud solutions can be applied to NFV to enable pervasive encryption within core networks. Consequently, deployment of network infrastructure encryption may now be much more practical. This may dramatically increase the difficulty of conducting unauthorized monitoring, man-in-the-middle attacks and route hijacks.

A key challenge for network operators continues to be detection of malicious attacks against subscribers. Service providers use a variety of non-intrusive monitoring techniques to identify systems that have been infected by malware and are active participants in botnets. They also need to quickly identify large-scale denial of service attacks and try to limit the impacts those attacks have on customers. Unfortunately, such detection has been expensive. NFV promises to distribute monitoring functions more economically and more widely, enabling much more agile responses to threats to customers. In addition, NFV can harness specific virtualization techniques recommended by NIST (such as hypervisor introspection) to ensure active monitoring of applications. Moreover, SDN provides the potential to quickly limit or block malicious traffic flows much closer to the source of attacks.

Finally, NFV promises to allow us the opportunity to leap ahead on security practices in networks. Most of the core network technologies in place today (routing, switching, DNS, etc.) were developed over 20 years ago. The industry providing broadband services knows so much more today than when the initial broadband and enterprise networks were first deployed. NFV and SDN technologies provide an opportunity to largely clean the slate and remove intrinsic vulnerabilities. The Internet was originally conceived as an open environment – access to the Internet was minimally controlled and authentication never integrated at the protocol level. This has proven to be naïve, and open distributed architecture solutions enabled by NFV and SDN can help to provide a better, more securable infrastructure. Of course, there will continue to be vulnerabilities – and new ones will be discovered that are unique to NFV and SDN solutions.

As Cybersecurity Awareness Month closes and we start a new year focused on improving consumer experiences, CableLabs is pursuing several projects to leverage these technologies to improve the security of broadband services. We are working to define and enable key imperatives required to secure virtualized environments. We are using our expertise to influence key standards initiatives. For example, we participate in the ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group (ETSI NFV) which is the most influential NFV standards organization.  In fact, CableLabs chairs the ETSI NFV Security Working Group which has advanced the security of distributed architectures substantially the past 4-years. Finally, we continue to innovate new open and distributed network solutions to create home networks that can adaptively support secure services, new methods of authentication and attestation in virtual infrastructures, and universal provisioning interfaces.