Document Type

Article

Abstract

Over the last decade, network applications have grown exponentially, demanding high-speed interconnects. Unfortunately, chip manufacturers are approaching the upper limits of silicon-based computing with slow improvements in computational performance and energy efficiency. This trend has forced the industry to shift paradigms, moving from monolithic architectures to heterogeneous, domain-specific designs. Moreover, the ever-evolving threats compromise digital services and demand more scalable and flexible solutions to ensure service continuity in production networks. Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) are a product of this new paradigm, integrating domain-specific engines and general-purpose cores to offload various network infrastructure tasks, including those related to security. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of SmartNICs, with a particular focus on their role in strengthening network defenses. It introduces SmartNIC technology and presents a taxonomy of security applications offloaded to SmartNICs, categorized into Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS), defenses against volumetric attacks, and data confidentiality mechanisms. Additionally, the paper explores vulnerabilities associated with adopting SmartNICs in the cloud, examining the threat model and reviewing proposed remediations in the literature. Finally, it discusses challenges and future trends in SmartNIC security applications, highlighting current initiatives and open research areas.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2025.104257

Rights

© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

APA Citation

Elizalde, S., AlSabeh, A., Mazloum, A., Choueiri, S., Kfoury, E., Gomez, J., & Crichigno, J. (2025). A survey on security applications with SmartNICs: Taxonomy, implementations, challenges, and future trends. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 242, 104257.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2025.104257

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