A Trust Management Framework for Network Applications within an SDN Environment

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm that changes the way networks are managed by separating the control plane from data plane and making networks programmable. The separation brings about flexibility, automation, orchestration and offers savings in both capital and operational expenditure. Despite all the advantages offered by SDN it introduces new threats that did not exist before or were harder to exploit in traditional networks, making network penetration potentially easier. One of the key threat to SDN is the authentication and authorisation of network applications that control network behaviour (unlike the traditional network where network devices like routers and switches are autonomous and run proprietary software and protocols to control the network). This paper proposes a mechanism that helps the control layer authenticate network applications and set authorisation permissions that constrict manipulation of network resources.