S-DPS: An SDN-Based DDoS Protection System for Smart Grids

Abstract

Information Communication Technology (ICT) environment in traditional power grids makes detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks more challenging. Existing security technologies, besides their efficiency, are not adequate to cater to DDoS security in Smart Grids (SGs) due to highly distributed and dynamic network environments. Recently, emerging Software Defined Networking- (SDN-) based approaches are proposed by researchers for SG’s DDoS protection; however, they are only able to protect against flooding attacks and are dependent on static thresholds. The proposed approach, i.e., Software Defined Networking-based DDoS Protection System (S-DPS), is efficiently addressing these issues by employing light-weight Tsallis entropy-based defense mechanisms using SDN environment. It provides early detection mechanism with mitigation of anomaly in real time. The approach offers the best deployment location of defense mechanism due to the centralized control of network. Moreover, the employment of a dynamic threshold mechanism is making detection process adaptive to the changing network conditions. S-DPS has demonstrated its effectiveness and efficiency in terms of Detection Rate (DR) and minimal CPU/RAM utilization, considering DDoS protection focusing smurf attacks, socket stress attacks, and SYN flood attacks.