Situational Awareness in Virtual Networks: The ASTRID Approach

Cloud-based services often follow the same logical structure of private networks. The lack of physical boundaries and the dependence on third party's infrastructural security mechanisms often undermine the confidence in the overall security level of virtualized applications. Integrating software instances of common security middleboxes into cloud networks helps overcome most suspicions, but leads to inefficient solutions. In this paper, we describe the vision behind the ASTRID project. The novelty of our concept lies in decoupling detection algorithms from monitoring and inspection tasks, seeking better integration with virtualization frameworks. We briefly elaborate on the overall conceptual architecture and the foundation of its implementation components. Additionally, we give insights on the expected impacts and opportunities brought by this novel paradigm over the existing approaches.