Federated Learning for Privacy-Preserving Intrusion Detection in Software-Defined Networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an innovative network technology. It changed the world of computer networking by providing solutions to many challenges. SDN provides programmability, easy and centralized network management, dynamic configuration, and improved security. Although SDN offers remarkable benefits but it provides centralized network management which is prone to attacks. So, intrusion detection systems (IDS) are essential to detect and prevent security attacks in SDN. Traditional IDS follow a centralized machine learning approach which causes vulnerabilities in IDS. Old-style IDS lack data privacy preservation, and solution for training data unavailability due to privacy. Federated learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning approach which provides a collaborative training approach without data sharing. In FL, training is performed on multiple nodes creating a global model without sharing the data. To address challenges and the limitations of traditional IDS, we proposed a FL based multi class classification IDS for SDN. FL delivers an efficient and scalable solution to address challenges of traditional IDS. The proposed model enhances security of SDN by not requiring the centralization of data. To test the impact and efficiency of proposed model, we used a latest and realistic cybersecurity dataset. We also compared the proposed model with state of art existing multi class classification studies. The results and their comparison with existing studies highlight the potential of proposed model to enhance network security while providing a privacy-preserving learning environment for intrusion detection.