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Are SD-WAN security concerns warranted?

Networking analysts and engineers examine SD-WAN security concerns, the importance of cabling in wireless environments and a new security attack that's difficult to detect.

Chuck Moozakis
By
Published: 17 Sep 2018

Are software-defined WAN security features sufficient to handle the demands of most enterprises? That's the question addressed by Christoph Jaggi, whose SD-WAN security concerns were cited in a recent blog post on IPSpace. The short answer? No -- primarily because of the various connections that can take place over an SD-WAN deployment.

"The only common elements between the different SD-WAN offerings on the market are the separation of the data plane and the control plane and the takeover of the control plane by an SD-WAN controller," Jaggi said. "When looking at an SD-WAN solution, it is part of the due diligence to look at the key management and the security architecture in detail. There are different approaches to implement network security, each having its own benefits and challenges."

Organizations contemplating SD-WAN rollouts should determine whether prospective products meet important security thresholds. For example, products should support cryptographic protocols and algorithms and meet current key management criteria, Jaggi said.

Read what Jaggi had to say about the justification for SD-WAN security concerns.

Wireless ain't nothing without the wire

You can have the fanciest access points and the flashiest management software, but without good and reliable wiring underpinning your wireless LAN, you're not going to get very far. So said network engineer Lee Badman as he recounted a situation where a switch upgrade caused formerly reliable APs to lurch to a halt.

"I've long been a proponent of recognizing [unshielded twisted pair] as a vital component in the networking ecosystem," Badman said. Flaky cable might still be sufficient in a Fast Ethernet world, but with multigig wireless now taking root, old cable can be the source of many problems, he said.

For Badman, the culprit was PoE-related and once the cable was re-terminated and tested anew, the APs again worked like a charm. A good lesson.

See what else Badman had to say about the issues that can plague a WLAN.

The long tail and DDoS attacks

Now there's something new to worry about with distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks. Network engineer Russ White has examined another tactic, dubbed tail attacks, which can just as easily clog networking resources.

Unlike traditional DDoS or DoS attacks that overwhelm bandwidth or TCP sessions, tail attacks concentrate on resource pools, such as storage nodes. In this scenario, a targeted node might be struggling because of full queues, White said, and that can cause dependent nodes to shut down as well. These tail attacks don't require a lot of traffic and, what's more, are difficult to detect.

For now, tail attacks aren't common; they require attackers to know a great deal about a particular network before they can be launched. That said, they are something network managers should be aware of, White added.

Read more about tail attacks.

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