Lightweight Virtualization Based Security Framework for Network Edge

The interest towards cybersecurity is fast growing over the last years. Accounting for the tremendous increase of security threats, the need for new defense strategies is acquiring an even growing importance. The widespread adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, ranging from smart industrial appliances to simple domestic sensors, will increase the complexity of managing security requirements in a comprehensive way. The provisioning of on-demand security services according to the SECurity-as-a-Service model is gaining notable attention. Nevertheless, the hosting of security functions in remote data-centers will inevitably introduce long routing detours, thus high latency and traffic overhead. To cope with this, edge computing will prove to be useful to process data locally. But the reduced capabilities of edge nodes can negatively impact the overall performance of SECaaS solutions. This paper focuses on the provisioning of virtualized security functions via lightweight virtualization (i.e., container) technologies running in a resource-constrained environment. Our analysis focuses primarily on the feasibility and the performance evaluation of such scenario.