Software Defined Networking (SDN) offers a variety of benefits for network operators. Essentially it allows more fine-grained management of the network, and this means more options in terms of automation, configuration and analysis. But with new technologies come new security concerns, and there is still a lot of research to be done into SDN security.
A recent project by the University of Newcastle sought to examine a variety of rattacks against SDN switches and produce a series of reports on how effective they are and what can be done. Find out more on the project page.