An Active Network Approach for Security Management

Networks becomes more complex practically in terms of offered services such as electronic commerce. As a result, networks are more and more subject to various kinds of complex security attacks. Existing security system responses have reached their limits in detecting and defending against various network attacks because current attacks are decentralized, automated and intelligent and these systems are passive in response to network attack in that they are limited to being local; and there is no automated, network wide response against detected attacks. Some drawbacks of existing systems reveal the necessity of designing a new generation of systems adapted to dynamical environment. In order to deal with these requirements, active networks approach provides interesting characteristics; it is a novel approach that gives networks and services flexibility and spontaneity. With an active network in place, we can build a more active and dynamic attack response by pushing the countermeasures near the source of attack. This paper describes this approach.