Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The primary objective of the proposed research is to develop a novel and comprehensive solution for automating the security auditing and monitoring of emerging Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-based cloud networks. New knowledge and technologies that would be transferred to Canadian industry through this project comprise a series of solutions designed specifically for NFV and SDN-based cloud networks, including a quantitative approach to auditing security properties of such networks, a machine learning-based proactive solution to security monitoring, an active probing-based method for securely verifying security compliance without accessing network traces, and novel techniques for addressing various privacy issues in auditing and monitoring. The key benefits expected to accrue to both the industry and academia include novel research ideas and methodology that could advance the state of the art in cloud security, NFV and SDN security, a research prototype and related demos that would be valuable to security practitioners, including those at our industrial partner (Ericsson Canada), and finally the training of HQP for an emerging industry which increasingly demands highly specialized expertise.