Optimizing IoT Network Intrusion Detection: A Deep Learning Approach

Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) serves as a essential component in data protection by monitoring computer networks for threats that can bypass conventional defenses such as malware and hackers. Deep learning (DL) techniques provide a promising approach for analyzing raw IoT network data to identify subtle patterns indicative of intrusion attempts. This study addresses a crucial research gap by developing a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) model specifically designed for the efficient detection of stealthy and polymorphic variants while reducing false positives. Utilizing the NF-ToN-IoT dataset, the proposed model achieves outstanding performance metrics on test data, with an accuracy of 0.9923, precision of 0.9925, recall of 0.9979, and F1 score of 0.9952. To comprehensively evaluate the robustness of the model, a multi-dataset validation strategy is employed. The model is retrained and assessed on established benchmark datasets on IoT Networks, including NF-UNSW-NB15, NF-UNSW-NB15-v2 and NF-BoTIoT, demonstrating exceptional performance. Furthermore, the significance of the contribution is validated by comparing the proposed model against previously established architectures such as CNN+BiLSTM, DNN, GRU+RNN, and CNN+LSTM using the NF-ToN-IoT dataset. The proposed model consistently outperforms these prior models, highlighting its efficacy and advancements in the field. Additionally, an ablation study is conducted to analyze the individual components of the Deep CNN model, providing insights into their contributions towards detecting malware traffic and offering guidance for optimizing future NIDS models in the cybersecurity domain. Making our work available open-source on https://github.com/codewithkhurshed/IDSIUB can enhance its accessibility and promote future research opportunities in Network Intrusion Detection.