Security-focused Networks of the Future

Abstract

Network attack and data breach statistics are abundant; from the 2020 Cisco Annual Internet Report citing an anticipated increase in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks from 7.9 million in 2018 to 15.4 million by 2023, to almost daily reports of data breaches, hackers targeting network device vulnerabilities, attacks on network services etc. This is, of course, unsurprising. Our lives are increasingly reliant on communication networks. In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen the accelerated provision of health services in the home and an increased prevalence of home schooling and working. This has placed a significant burden on our home networks, one which cyber-criminals have been only too eager to exploit. The challenge to protect network users extends from there. So, what does cyber security look like in the networks of the future? The emergence of technologies such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) enable innovation in network security, but these technologies create additional attack surfaces. Dramatic advances in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are influencing security services and design for security, but they can also be exploited to produce sophisticated attacks. How can we leverage these technologies while managing the challenge of the attacker to better protect, secure and maintain resilient networks? Can we deliver scalable, analytics-based, security-focused network orchestration and management? This talk will introduce our latest research addressing these challenging questions, present developments in the field, and discuss future research directions.