F5 Friday: BIG DDoS Umbrella powered by the HP VAN SDN Controller

#SDN #DDoS #infosec Integration and collaboration is the secret sauce to breaking down barriers between security and networking

Most of the focus of SDN apps has been, to date, on taking layer 4-7 services and making them into extensions of the SDN controller. But HP is taking a different approach and the results are tantalizing.

HP's approach, as indicated by the recent announcement of its HP SDN App Store, focuses more on the use of SDN apps as a way to enable the sharing of data across IT silos to create a more robust architecture. These apps are capable of analyzing events and information that enable the HP VAN SDN Controller to prescriptively modify network behavior to address issues and concerns that impact networks and the applications that traverse them.

One such concern is security (rarely mentioned in the context of SDN). For example, how the network might response more rapidly to threat events, such as in progress DDoS attack.

Which is where the F5 BIG DDoS Umbrella for HP's VAN (Virtual Application Network) comes into play.

The focus of F5 BIG DDoS Umbrella is on mitigating in-progress attacks and the implementation depends on a collaboration between two disparate devices: the HP VAN SDN Controller and F5 BIG-IP. The two devices communicate via an F5 SDN app deployed on the HP VAN SDN Controller. The controller is all about the network, while the F5 SDN app is focused on processing and acting on information obtained from F5 security services deployed on the BIG-IP.

This is collaboration and integration at work, breaking down barriers between groups (security and network operations) by sharing data and automating processes*.

F5 BIG DDoS Umbrella

The BIG DDoS Umbrella relies upon the ability of F5 BIG-IP to intelligently intercept, inspect and identity DDoS attacks in flight. BIG-IP is able to identify DDoS events targeting the network, application layers, DNS or SSL. Configuration (available as an iApp upon request) is flexible, enabling the trigger to be one, a combination of or all of the events. This is where collaboration between security and network operations is critical to ensure the response to a DDoS event meets defined business and operational goals.

When BIG-IP identifies a threat, it sends the relevant information with a prescribed action to the HP VAN SDN Controller. The BIG DDoS Umbrella agent (the SDN "app") on the HP VAN SDN Controller processes the information, and once the location of entry for the attacker is isolated, the prescribed action is implemented on the device closest to the attacker.

The BIG DDoS Umbrella App is free, and designed to extend the existing DDoS protection capabilities of BIG-IP to the edge of the network. It is a community framework which users may use, enhance or improve.

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