Automated Security-focused Network Configuration Management: State of the Art, Challenges, and Future Directions

With the continuous advancements and innovation in Information Technology (IT), new vendors and products constantly emerge to provide networking services and solutions. Meanwhile, the multi-vendor environment and the huge diversity of siloed devices require new approaches to tackle the complexity and heterogeneity in network configuration management. However, the traditional way of using configuration scripts requires domain expertise with the target system. In recent years, many automated solutions have emerged in academia and industry. This paper presents a literature review on the state-of-the-art of them. It focuses on the background that led to the development of automated techniques, summarizes domain-specific challenges, a nd discusses related studies published to date. Finally, five research gaps with research directions are identified, including 1) intent translation, 2) intelligent network configuration m anagement, 3) a utomated p lanning, 4) intent-based solutions for I2NSF, and 5) reliable network performance.