S2Net: A Security Framework for Software Defined Intelligent Building Networks

During the last ten years, the progress of the Internet of Things (IoT) has continued unabated and gradually expanded into almost every corner of our daily lives. One very typical use case of IoT is the intelligent building (IB). Along with the remarkable rise of IoT, an increasing number of smart devices will be connected to IB networks, which brings many challenges to current IB network architectures. SDN (Software Defined Networking) is a potential solution to future IB networks, however, there are still few studies on SDN-based IB networks. In this paper, we have proposed a secure SDN framework named as S
²
Net, offering authentication and key agreement between the central controller and smart devices. In addition, we have designed a secure OpenFlow message issuing protocol for IB networks, it is used to securely exchange messages between the controller and smart devices. Also, these security protocols are evaluated regarding their security and performance. In doing so, we take an important step towards integrating SDN with extant IB networks.