End-to-end Security for Sdn Controllers in Distributed K8s Environments for Fog and Cloud

The deployment of Software Defined Networking (SDN) in distributed Kubernetes networks, particularly in cloud and fog networks, has brought forth sophisticated security challenges. Classical approaches are insufficient to perform secure, resource-effective control-plane operation and auditable node-to-node coordination, particularly when system size and diversity grow. These boundaries offer a window to vulnerabilities that malicious actors can take advantage of and impede real-time threat detection due to poor adaptability to changing attack patterns. To mitigate these challenges, this study proposes a three-layered security system with three independent mechanisms closely coupled with SDN and Kubernetes. The first layer, Flexi Control Plan (FCP), implements light-weight SDN controller modules with incorporated runtime attestation to provide trusted execution in resource-starved fog networks. Moreover, the Secure Software-Defined Offloading (SSDO) layer provides accountable inter-node coordination through encrypted, policy-enforced communications and cryptography signature verification to eliminate unauthorized offloading and coordination spoofing. In addition to these, Sentinel-Adaptive Intrusion Detection (SAID) layer uses an unsupervised deep learning Autoencoder trained on usual traffic to monitor SDN flow pattern to observe further security so that reconstruction error anomalies can be discovered and potential threats can be signified, and zero-day attacks can be identified lawlessly. In unison, FCP, SSDO, and SAID constitute homogeneous architecture providing real-time security, optimized resource usage, and scalable, adaptive operations. It greatly improves system reliability and security even under complex hostile fog-cloud environments.