CSC News

Research Targets Making Network Operations More Secure

Dr. William Enck, Associate Professor in the NC State Computer Science Department, and Dr. Bradley Reaves, Assistant Professor in the NC State Computer Science Department, have been awarded $1,033,306 by the US Navy – Office of Naval Research to support their research proposal titled “Defining Security Policy in Distributed Environments Using Network Views.”

The award will run from December 1, 2019 to November 30, 2022.

Abstract – Existing networking technologies are primarily focused on functionality, not security.  Consequently, requirements of these technologies, such as fixed network topologies, lead to rigid architectures that fail to enable the network access control requirements of current and future computing environments.  We propose the creation of a novel primitive called network views that allows a physical or virtual host to have a different set of accessible peers, regardless of network address or topological placement of those peers.  We seek to explore and characterize the utility and practicality of network views in different network environments, ranging from traditional LANs to multi-site, multi-tenant networks such as those emerging in cloud and cellular networks. Our proposed design combines concepts from software-defined networking (SDN), operating systems access control, and distributed consensus protocols.  Through these efforts, we seek to provide a new security foundation for the growing security needs of both public and private sector network operations.

For more information on Dr. Enck, click here.

For more information on Dr. Reaves, click here.

~coates~