Evaluating deep learning variants for cyber-attacks detection and multi-class classification in IoT networks

The Internet of Things (IoT), considered an intriguing technology with substantial potential for tackling many societal concerns, has been developing into a significant component of the future. The foundation of IoT is the capacity to manipulate and track material objects over the Internet. The IoT network infrastructure is more vulnerable to attackers/hackers as additional features are accessible online. The complexity of cyberattacks has grown to pose a bigger threat to public and private sector organizations. They undermine Internet businesses, tarnish company branding, and restrict access to data and amenities. Enterprises and academics are contemplating using machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) for cyberattack avoidance because ML and DL show immense potential in several domains. Several DL teachings are implemented to extract various patterns from many annotated datasets. DL can be a helpful tool for detecting cyberattacks. Early network data segregation and detection thus become more essential than ever for mitigating cyberattacks. Numerous deep-learning model variants, including deep neural networks (DNNs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and recurrent neural networks (RNNs), are implemented in the study to detect cyberattacks on an assortment of network traffic streams. The Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity's CICDIoT2023 dataset is utilized to test the efficacy of the proposed approach. The proposed method includes data preprocessing, robust scalar and label encoding techniques for categorical variables, and model prediction using deep learning models. The experimental results demonstrate that the RNN model achieved the highest accuracy of 96.56%. The test results indicate that the proposed approach is efficient compared to other methods for identifying cyberattacks in a realistic IoT environment.