Ensuring security for networks of the future

Company networks are inflexible - they are made up of many components that require a good deal of effort to be connected together. That's why networks of the future will be controlled by a central unit. However, this makes them a target for hackers. At CeBIT, Fraunhofer researchers will demonstrate how to protect these future networks.

CeBIT 2015 - Fraunhofer, Jan. 05, 2015 – 

Today's company networks comprise hundreds of devices: routers for directing data packets to the right receiver, firewall components for protecting internal networks from the outside world, and network switches. Such networks are extremely inflexible because every component, every router and every switch can carry out only the task it was manufactured for. If the network has to be expanded, the company has to integrate new routers, firewalls or switches and then program them by hand. That's why experts worldwide have been working on flexible networks of the future for the last five years or so, developing what is known as software-defined networking (SDN). It presents one disadvantage, however; it is susceptible to hacker attacks.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security AISEC in Garching, near Munich, will be showing how to make SDN secure at the CeBIT trade fair in Hannover, March 16-20. A demonstrator at the Fraunhofer exhibition stand (Hall 9, Booth E40) will show how SDN and all related components can be monitored. One of these components is visualization software, which displays the network's individual components and depicts in real time how the various applications are communicating with the controller. "We can show how software influences the behavior of different components using the controller, or, in the case of an attack, how it disrupts them," says Christian Banse, a security expert at AISEC.

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