A Hierarchical Security Events Correlation Model for Real-time Cyber Threat Detection and Response

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Maosa, Herbert, Ouazzane, Karim, Ghanem, Mohamed Chahine
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910788654989312
author Maosa, Herbert
Ouazzane, Karim
Ghanem, Mohamed Chahine
author_facet Maosa, Herbert
Ouazzane, Karim
Ghanem, Mohamed Chahine
contents Intrusion detection systems perform post-compromise detection of security breaches whenever preventive measures such as firewalls do not avert an attack. However, these systems raise a vast number of alerts that must be analysed and triaged by security analysts. This process is largely manual, tedious and time-consuming. Alert correlation is a technique that tries to reduce the number of intrusion alerts by aggregating those that are related in some way. However, the correlation is performed outside the IDS through third-party systems and tools, after the high volume of alerts has already been raised. These other third-party systems add to the complexity of security operations. In this paper, we build on the very researched area of correlation techniques by developing a novel hierarchical event correlation model that promises to reduce the number of alerts issued by an Intrusion Detection System. This is achieved by correlating the events before the IDS classifies them. The proposed model takes the best of features from similarity and graph-based correlation techniques to deliver an ensemble capability not possible by either approach separately. Further, we propose a correlation process for correlation of events rather than alerts as is the case in current art. We further develop our own correlation and clustering algorithm which is tailor-made to the correlation and clustering of network event data. The model is implemented as a proof of concept with experiments run on the DARPA 99 Intrusion detection set. The correlation achieved 87 percent data reduction through aggregation, producing nearly 21000 clusters in about 30 seconds.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_01219
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Hierarchical Security Events Correlation Model for Real-time Cyber Threat Detection and Response
Maosa, Herbert
Ouazzane, Karim
Ghanem, Mohamed Chahine
Cryptography and Security
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Intrusion detection systems perform post-compromise detection of security breaches whenever preventive measures such as firewalls do not avert an attack. However, these systems raise a vast number of alerts that must be analysed and triaged by security analysts. This process is largely manual, tedious and time-consuming. Alert correlation is a technique that tries to reduce the number of intrusion alerts by aggregating those that are related in some way. However, the correlation is performed outside the IDS through third-party systems and tools, after the high volume of alerts has already been raised. These other third-party systems add to the complexity of security operations. In this paper, we build on the very researched area of correlation techniques by developing a novel hierarchical event correlation model that promises to reduce the number of alerts issued by an Intrusion Detection System. This is achieved by correlating the events before the IDS classifies them. The proposed model takes the best of features from similarity and graph-based correlation techniques to deliver an ensemble capability not possible by either approach separately. Further, we propose a correlation process for correlation of events rather than alerts as is the case in current art. We further develop our own correlation and clustering algorithm which is tailor-made to the correlation and clustering of network event data. The model is implemented as a proof of concept with experiments run on the DARPA 99 Intrusion detection set. The correlation achieved 87 percent data reduction through aggregation, producing nearly 21000 clusters in about 30 seconds.
title A Hierarchical Security Events Correlation Model for Real-time Cyber Threat Detection and Response
topic Cryptography and Security
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.01219