Designing Security-Aware Service Requests for NFV-Enabled Networks

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a recent concept where virtualization enables the shift from network functions (e.g., routers, switches, load-balancers, proxies) on specialized hardware appliances to software images running on all-purpose, high-volume servers. The resource allocation problem in the NFV environment has received considerable attention in the past years. However, little attention was paid to the security aspects of the problem in spite of the increasing number of vulnerabilities faced by cloud-based applications. Securing the services is an urgent need to completely benefit from the advantages offered by NFV. In this paper, we show how a network service request, composed of a set of service function chains (SFC) should be modified and enriched to take into consideration the security requirements of the supported service. We examine the well-known security best practices and propose a two-step algorithm that extends the initial SFC requests to a more complex chaining model that includes the security requirements of the service.