Towards the Development of a Cloud Computing Intrusion Detection Framework Using an Ensemble Hybrid Feature Selection Approach

Abstract

Attacks on cloud computing (CC) services and infrastructure have raised concerns about the efficacy of data protection mechanisms in this environment. The framework developed in this study (CCAID: cloud computing, attack, and intrusion detection) aims to improve the performance of intrusion detection systems (IDS) operating in CC environments. It deploys a proposed new hybrid ensemble feature selection (FS) method. The ensemble includes FS algorithms of three different types (filter, wrapper, and embedded algorithms). The selected features used to train the ML (machine learning) model of the intrusion detection component comprised a binary detection engine for the identification of malicious/attack packets and a multiclassification detection engine for the identification of the type of attack. Both detection engines deploy ensemble classifiers. Experiments were carried out using the NSL KDD dataset. The binary model achieved a classification accuracy of 99.55% with a very low false alarm rate of 0.45%. The classification accuracy of the multiclassification model was also high (98.92%). These results compare very favourably with the results reported in the literature and indicate the feasibility of the framework implementation.