Performance Analysis of Intrusion Detection Systems Using a Feature Selection Method on the UNSW-NB15 Dataset

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RESEARCH

Performance Analysis of Intrusion Detection Systems Using a Feature Selection Method on the UNSW‑NB15 Dataset Sydney M. Kasongo*  and Yanxia Sun *Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Science, University of Johannesburg, Kingsway Ave, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa

Abstract  Computer networks intrusion detection systems (IDSs) and intrusion prevention systems (IPSs) are critical aspects that contribute to the success of an organization. Over the past years, IDSs and IPSs using different approaches have been developed and implemented to ensure that computer networks within enterprises are secure, reliable and available. In this paper, we focus on IDSs that are built using machine learning (ML) techniques. IDSs based on ML methods are effective and accurate in detecting networks attacks. However, the performance of these systems decreases for high dimensional data spaces. Therefore, it is crucial to implement an appropriate feature extraction method that can prune some of the features that do not possess a great impact in the classification process. Moreover, many of the ML based IDSs suffer from an increase in false positive rate and a low detection accuracy when the models are trained on highly imbalanced datasets. In this paper, we present an analysis the UNSW-NB15 intrusion detection dataset that will be used for training and testing our models. Moreover, we apply a filter-based feature reduction technique using the XGBoost algorithm. We then implement the following ML approaches using the reduced feature space: Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest-Neighbour (kNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Decision Tree (DT). In our experiments, we considered both the binary and multiclass classification configurations. The results demonstrated that the XGBoost-based feature selection method allows for methods such as the DT to increase its test accuracy from 88.13 to 90.85% for the binary classification scheme. Keywords:  Machine learning, Feature engineering, Computer networks, Intrusion detection

Introduction The rapid pace at which technologies such as the Internet, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and communication systems is advancing has caused hackers to evolve with a higher velocity in terms of their capabilities. These criminals strive to discover new ways to compromise computer networks security. Therefore, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) inherently become critical components in a computer network. An IDS is defined as a hardware or a software system that monitors an organization’s computer network for imminent and potential threats or attacks. Moreover, an IDS is capable © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indi