Filtering intrusion detection alarms

A Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) is an alarm system for networks. NIDS monitors all network actions and generates alarms when it detects suspicious or malicious attempts. A false positive alarm is generated when the NIDS misclassifies a normal action in the network as an attack. We presen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mansour, Nashat (author)
Other Authors: Chehab, Maya I. (author), Faour, Ahmad (author)
Format: article
Published: 2010
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10725/2948
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10586-009-0096-9
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10586-009-0096-9
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Summary:A Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) is an alarm system for networks. NIDS monitors all network actions and generates alarms when it detects suspicious or malicious attempts. A false positive alarm is generated when the NIDS misclassifies a normal action in the network as an attack. We present a data mining technique to assist network administrators to analyze and reduce false positive alarms that are produced by a NIDS. Our data mining technique is based on a Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Map (GHSOM) that adjusts its architecture during an unsupervised training process according to the characteristics of the input alarm data. GHSOM clusters these alarms in a way that supports network administrators in making decisions about true and false alarms. Our empirical results show that our technique is effective for real-world intrusion data.