- [Instructor] The Software-Defined Network,
or SDN architecture,
provides a lot of different benefits
as you learn in previous lessons.
But also, there are several threats
against SDN solutions.
And this includes things like a malicious threat actor
installing a rogue controller,
or a malicious controller,
to send malicious instructions
to the underlying SDN devices and SDN services.
Now you also have man-in-the-middle attacks
for communication between the controllers
and the SDN devices to change the instructions sent
by the controller.
Those are a little bit more challenging
for an attacker, but they can still be possible.
Now, other vulnerabilities can also be used
to launch the denial service attacks
to the SDM devices or to change the data path
to get access to sensitive information.
So you also have to understand
some of the mitigations for these threats
in SDN architectures.
First, the SDN controllers need to be placed
at a secure location in the network,
with very stringent access control policies.
Also, out-of-band management needs to be used
and deployed to establish dedicated channels
between the controller and the SDN underlying devices
of the network, infrastructure devices.
Secure communication channels
between the controller and the SDN devices.
And especially whenever it comes to APIs,
you need to follow, you know,
best practices on how to enhance the security of APIs,
apply encryption, and use, you know, modern techniques.
And you know, of course you know,
modern SDN solutions like the Cisco DNA Center,
already provides all these capabilities
and all these mitigations, you know,
for combining against potential attacks.
Another thing that you want to do
is to establish trust relationships
between the controller and the SDN devices,
and the network will still have to cope
with assistant threats,
like attacks on vulnerabilities
in the network devices and management stations.
So that's why patch management
and keeping up with security advisories
is so important still in moderns days.