AI-Powered Hybrid Intrusion Detection Framework for Cloud Security Using Novel Metaheuristic Optimization

Cybersecurity poses considerable problems to Cloud Computing (CC), especially regarding Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs), facing difficulties with skewed datasets and suboptimal classification model performance. This study presents the Hybrid Intrusion Detection System (HyIDS), an innovative IDS that employs the Energy Valley Optimizer (EVO) for Feature Selection (FS). Additionally, it introduces a novel technique for enhancing the cybersecurity of cloud computing through the integration of machine learning methodologies with the EVO Algorithm. The Energy Valley Optimizer (EVO) effectively diminished features in the CIC-DDoS2019 dataset from 88 to 38 and in the CSE-CIC-IDS2018 data from 80 to 43, significantly enhancing computing efficiency. HyIDS incorporates four Machine Learning (ML) models: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Decision Tree (D_Tree), and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN). The proposed HyIDS was assessed utilizing two real-world intrusion datasets, CIC-DDoS2019 and CSE-CIC-IDS2018, both distinguished by considerable class imbalances. The CIC-DDoS2019 dataset has a significant imbalance between DDoS assault samples and legal traffic, while the CSE-CIC-IDS2018 dataset primarily comprises benign traffic with insufficient representation of attack types, complicating the detection of minority attacks. A downsampling technique was employed to balance the datasets, hence improving detection efficacy for both benign and malicious traffic. Twenty-four trials were done, revealing substantial enhancements in categorization accuracy, precision, and recall. Our suggested D_TreeEVO model attained an accuracy rate of 99.13% and an F1 score of 98.94% on the CIC-DDoS2019 dataset, and an accuracy rate of 99.78% and an F1 score of 99.70% on the CSE-CIC-IDS2018 data. These data demonstrate that EVO significantly improves cybersecurity in Cloud Computing (CC).