Hybrid deep learning based threat intelligence framework for Industrial IoT systems

The exponential growth of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a major driving force behind Industry 4.0. Besides complete automation and transformation, industrial IoT has so far created plenty of opportunities in several sectors 1.3such as smart manufacturing, energy, healthcare, smart agriculture, retail, supply chain, and transportation. However, the increased pervasiveness, reduced human involvement, resource-constrained nature of underlying IoT devices, dynamic and shared spectrum of 4G/5G communication, and reliance on the cloud for outsourced massive storage and computation bring novel security challenges and concerns. A significant challenge currently confronting the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the increasing prevalence of sophisticated IoT malware threats and attacks. To address this, the authors propose a hybrid threat intelligence framework that is not only highly scalable but also incorporates self-optimizing capabilities, enabling it to counteract a wide range of persistent cyber threats and attacks targeting IIoT systems. For a comprehensive evaluation, the authors utilized the state-of-the-art TON_IIoT dataset, which includes over 3 million instances representing various adversarial patterns and threat vectors. In addition, both standard and extended performance evaluation metrics were employed to ensure a thorough assessment. The proposed approach was also compared against several contemporary deep learning-based architectures and existing benchmark algorithms. The results indicate that the proposed method achieves superior detection accuracy, with only a minimal compromise in speed efficiency. Finally, a 10-fold cross-validation was conducted to provide an unbiased evaluation of the framework’s performance.