5th Biannual Meeting of ANSP - BMA5

ACADEMIC NETWORKS: SECURITY TODAY AND TOMORROW

The IT environment in São Paulo universities is evolving rapidly, due to lower costs, mobility, cloud computing and the virtualization of networks and their functions. This trend brings a sea of ​​opportunities but also brings new risks and vulnerabilities.

Like all new technologies, they bring with them the natural fear of the unknown. But they also bring the benefits of innovation. Cloud computing, for example, brings that sense of "return to the main frame“, with all its risks, from the introduction of a single point of failure to the unknown risk embedded in any drastic change. On the other hand, this same cloud computing brings virtual machines and all the security that they imply: they all have the same configuration, all have the same security applications, being created automatically, there is not the inherent risk of human error in the process of configuring thousands of PCs. And most importantly, having identified a problem, it can be fixed on every machine at one time, in a batch.

As occurs any time of technological transition, the issues raised are of concern to everyone. It is sufficient to search Google with the words "SDN" and "security", to find millions of entries and articles. The same if "SDN" is replaced by "cloud computing"! But the question is not only about what is to come. São Paulo universities, like most institutions in the world, invested a lot of money in recent years in acquiring conventional network equipment and will not discard it in a blink of the eye. For years, conventional networks, "defined by hardware" and "material" computers and will continue to be used in our work environments. Therefore, the question arises: how can we ensure that the security necessary for the networks of today and that required for networks of tomorrow are implemented and maintained harmoniously?

Let's look at the ANSP network in a year’s time. Probably, we will have the core network and international connections working in hybrid mode, sharing IP and OpenFlow. The same will occur in some universities, some of which will certainly use clouds, but also servers and PCs. Other institutions will use only conventional networks with servers and PCs. And, of course, some laboratories will want to bring together the cloud, OpenFlow and other SDN techniques to create complete virtual networks, the so-called virtual slices of the virtual network.

At the fifth edition of the Biannual Meeting of ANSP (BMA5), from 22 to 25/04/2014, discussions will focus on how education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo are addressing these issues, how they can prepare for the future and how they can work together to meet these new challenges with minimal cost and maximum efficiency and effectiveness.