Machine learning approach for intrusion detection systems as a cyber security strategy for Small and Medium Enterprises

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are businesses that account for a large percentage of the economy in many countries, but they lack cyber security. The present study examines different supervised machine learning methods with a focus on intrusion detection systems (IDSs) that will help in improving SMEs’ security. The algorithms that are tested through a real dataset, are Naïve Bayes, Sequential minimal optimization (SMO), C4.5 decision tree, and Random Forest. The experiments are run using the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analyses (WEKA) 3.8.4 tools and the metrics used to evaluate the results were: accuracy, false-positive rate (FPR), and total time to train and build a classification model. The results obtained from the original dataset with 130 features show a high value of accuracy, but the computation time to build the classification model was notably high for the cases of C4.5 (1 hr. and 20 mins) and SMO algorithm (4 hrs. and 20 mins). the Information Gain (IG) method was used and the result was impressive. The time needed to train the model was reduced in the order of a few minutes and the accuracy was high (above 95%). In the end, challenges that SMEs can have for choosing an IDS such as lack of scalability and autonomic self-adaptation, can be solved by using a correct methodology with machine learning techniques.