Network security architectures for VANET

In recent years, cyber security oriented research is paying much close attention on Vehicular Adhoc NETworks (VANETs). However, existing vehicular networks do not meet current security requirements. Typically for dynamic networks, maximal decentralization and rapidly changing topology of moving hosts form a number of security issues associated with ensuring access control of hosts, security policy enforcement, and resistance of the routing methods. To solve these problems generally, the paper reviews SDN (software defined networks) based network security architectures of VANET. The following tasks are solved in our work: composing of network security architectures for SDN-VANET (architecture with the central control and shared security servers, decentralized (zoned) architecture, hierarchical architecture); implementation of these architectures in virtual modeling environment; and experimental study of effectiveness of the suggested architectures. With large-scale vehicular networks, architectures with multiple SDN controllers are most effective. In small networks, the architecture with the central control also significantly outperforms the traditional VANET architecture. For the suggested architectures, three control modes are discussed in the paper: central, distributed and hybrid modes. Unlike common architectures, all of the proposed security architectures allow us to establish a security policy in m2m-networks and increase resistance capabilities of self-organizing networks.