Reproducibility in Event-Log Research: A Parametrised Generator and Benchmark for Event-based Signatures

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Khan, Saad, Parkinson, Simon, Roopak, Monika
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866915738234650624
author Khan, Saad
Parkinson, Simon
Roopak, Monika
author_facet Khan, Saad
Parkinson, Simon
Roopak, Monika
contents Event-based datasets are crucial for cybersecurity analysis. A key use case is detecting event-based signatures, which represent attacks spanning multiple events and can only be understood once the relevant events are identified and linked. Analysing event datasets is essential for monitoring system security, but their growing volume and frequency create significant scalability and processing difficulties. Researchers rely on these datasets to develop and test techniques for automatically identifying signatures. However, because real datasets are security-sensitive and rarely shared, it becomes difficult to perform meaningful comparative evaluation between different approaches. This work addresses this evaluation limitation by offering a systematic method for generating event logs with known ground truth, enabling reproducible and comparable research. We present a novel parametrised generation technique capable of producing synthetic event datasets that contain event-based signatures for discovery. To demonstrate the capabilities of the technique, we provide a benchmark in signature detection. Our benchmarking demonstrated the suitability of DBSCAN, achieving a score greater than 0.95 Adjusted Rand Index on most generated datasets. This work enhances the ability of researchers to develop and benchmark new cybersecurity techniques, ultimately contributing to more robust and effective cybersecurity measures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_12978
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reproducibility in Event-Log Research: A Parametrised Generator and Benchmark for Event-based Signatures
Khan, Saad
Parkinson, Simon
Roopak, Monika
Cryptography and Security
Event-based datasets are crucial for cybersecurity analysis. A key use case is detecting event-based signatures, which represent attacks spanning multiple events and can only be understood once the relevant events are identified and linked. Analysing event datasets is essential for monitoring system security, but their growing volume and frequency create significant scalability and processing difficulties. Researchers rely on these datasets to develop and test techniques for automatically identifying signatures. However, because real datasets are security-sensitive and rarely shared, it becomes difficult to perform meaningful comparative evaluation between different approaches. This work addresses this evaluation limitation by offering a systematic method for generating event logs with known ground truth, enabling reproducible and comparable research. We present a novel parametrised generation technique capable of producing synthetic event datasets that contain event-based signatures for discovery. To demonstrate the capabilities of the technique, we provide a benchmark in signature detection. Our benchmarking demonstrated the suitability of DBSCAN, achieving a score greater than 0.95 Adjusted Rand Index on most generated datasets. This work enhances the ability of researchers to develop and benchmark new cybersecurity techniques, ultimately contributing to more robust and effective cybersecurity measures.
title Reproducibility in Event-Log Research: A Parametrised Generator and Benchmark for Event-based Signatures
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12978