An Evaluation of Transformer Models for Early Intrusion Detection in Cloud Continuum

With the increasing popularity of the cloud continuum, the security of different layers and nodes involved has become more relevant than ever. Intrusion detection systems, are one of the main tools to identify and intercept intrusion attacks. Furthermore, identifying the attacks in time, before they are completed, is necessary in order to deploy countermeasures in time and to limit the losses. In this work, we evaluate the use of transformer models for implementing early-detection signature-based detection systems targeted at Cloud Continuum. We implement the approach in the context of our tool for early detection of network intrusions and we evaluate it using the CICIDS2017 dataset and MQTT-IDS-2020. The results show that transformer models are a viable alternative for early-detection systems and this will pave the road for further research on the topic.