Securing the SDN Data Plane in Emerging Technology Domains: A Review

Over the last decade, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has garnered increasing research interest for networking and security. This interest stems from the programmability and dynamicity offered by SDN, as well as the growing importance of SDN as a foundational technology of future telecommunications networks and the greater Internet. However, research into SDN security has focused disproportionately on the security of the control plane, resulting in the relative trivialization of data plane security methods and a corresponding lack of appreciation of the data plane in SDN security discourse. To remedy this, this paper provides a comprehensive review of SDN data plane security research, classified into three primary research domains and several sub-domains. The three primary research domains are as follows: security capabilities within the data plane, security of the SDN infrastructure, and dynamic routing within the data plane. Our work resulted in the identification of specific strengths and weaknesses in existing research, as well as promising future directions, based on novelty and overlap with emerging technology domains. The most striking future directions are the use of hybrid SDN architectures leveraging a programmable data plane, SDN for heterogeneous network security, and the development of trust-based methods for SDN management and security, including trust-based routing.