Secure Virtual Network Embedding in a Multi-Cloud Environment

Recently-proposed virtualization platforms give Cloud users the freedom to specify their network topologies and addressing schemes. These platforms have, however, been targeting a single datacenter of a cloud provider, which is insufficient to support (critical) applications that need to be deployed across multiple trust domains while enforcing diverse security requirements. This paper addresses this problem by presenting a novel solution for a central component of network virtualization –the online network embedding, which finds efficient mappings of virtual networks requests onto the substrate network. Our solution considers security as a first class citizen, enabling the definition of flexible policies in three central areas: on the communications, where alternative security compromises can be explored (e.g.,encryption); on the computations, supporting redundancy if necessary while capitalizing on hardware assisted trusted executions; across multiples clouds, including public and private facilities, with the associated trust levels. We formulate the solution as a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP), and evaluate our proposal against the most commonly used alternative. Our analysis gives insight into the trade-offs involved with the inclusion of security and trust into network virtualization, providing evidence that this notion may enhance profits under the appropriate cost models