Towards security-as-a-service in multi-access edge

Abstract

The prevailing network security measures are often implemented on proprietary appliances that are deployed at fixed network locations with constant capacity. Such a rigid deployment is sometimes necessary, but undermines the flexibility of security services in meeting the demands of emerging applications, such as augmented/virtual reality, autonomous driving, and 5G for industry 4.0, which are provoked by the evolution of connected and smart devices, their heterogeneity, and integration with cloud and edge computing infrastructures. To loosen these rigid security deployments, in this paper, we propose a data-centric SECurity-as-a-Service (SECaaS) framework for elastic deployment and provisioning of security services at the Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) infrastructure. In particular, we discuss three security services that are suitable for edge deployment: (i) an intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS), (ii) an access control enforcement system (ACE), and (iii) a communication anonymization service (CA). We benchmark the common security microservices along with the design and implementation of a proof of concept communication anonymization application.