In Security Operations Centres (SOCs) security practitioners work using a range of tools to detect and mitigate malicious computer-network activity. Sonification, in which data is represented as sound, is said to have potential as an approach to addressing some of the unique challenges faced by SOCs. For example, sonification has been shown to enable peripheral monitoring of processes, which could aid practitioners multitasking in busy SOCs. The perspectives of security practitioners on incorporating sonification into their actual working environments have not yet been examined, however. The aim of this paper therefore is to address this gap by exploring attitudes to using sonification in SOCs. We report on the results of a study consisting of an online survey (N=20) and interviews (N=21) with security practitioners working in a range of different SOCs. Our contribution is a refined appreciation of the contexts in which sonification could aid in SOC working practice, and an understanding of the areas in which sonification may not be beneficial or may even be problematic.We also analyse the critical requirements for the design of sonification systems and their integration into the SOC setting. Our findings clarify insights into the potential benefits and challenges of introducing sonification to support work in this vital security-monitoring environment.
It is important that humans are presented with network-security information, such that they are best able to detect anomalies that do not fit automated detection profiles, and to triage machine-based detection inaccuracies @cite_41 . The provision of effective techniques for presenting security data to humans is important for SOCs, and an area of continuing academic research @cite_10 . Security visualizations and text-based interfaces present automated system output, as well as unparsed network packets, which can enable security practitioners to recognise anomalous activity @cite_20 .
@cite_41 @cite_10 @cite_20
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With the rapid growth and the increasing complexity of network infrastructures and the evolution of attacks, identifying and preventing network abuses is getting more and more strategic to ensure an adequate degree of protection from both external and internal menaces. In this scenario many techniques are emerging for inspecting network traffic and discriminating between anomalous and normal behaviors to detect undesired or suspicious activities. Unfortunately, the concept of normal or abnormal network behavior depends on several factors and its recognition requires the availability of a model aiming at characterizing current behavior, based on a statistical idealization of past events. There are two main challenges when generating the training data needed for effective modeling. First, network traffic is very complex and unpredictable, and second, the model is subject to changes over time, since anomalies are continuously evolving. As attack techniques and patterns change, previously gained information about how to tell them apart from normal traffic may be no longer valid. Thus, a desirable characteristic of an effective model for network anomaly detection is its ability to adapt to change and to generalize its behavior to multiple different network environments. In other words, a self-learning system is needed. This suggests the adoption of machine learning techniques to implement semi-supervised anomaly detection systems where the classifier is trained with ''normal'' traffic data only, so that knowledge about anomalous behaviors can be constructed and evolve in a dynamic way. For this purpose we explored the effectiveness of a detection approach based on machine learning, using the Discriminative Restricted Boltzmann Machine to combine the expressive power of generative models with good classification accuracy capabilities to infer part of its knowledge from incomplete training data. In network intrusion detection, anomaly-based approaches in particular suffer from accurate evaluation, comparison, and deployment which originates from the scarcity of adequate datasets. Many such datasets are internal and cannot be shared due to privacy issues, others are heavily anonymized and do not reflect current trends, or they lack certain statistical characteristics. These deficiencies are primarily the reasons why a perfect dataset is yet to exist. Thus, researchers must resort to datasets that are often suboptimal. As network behaviors and patterns change and intrusions evolve, it has very much become necessary to move away from static and one-time datasets toward more dynamically generated datasets which not only reflect the traffic compositions and intrusions of that time, but are also modifiable, extensible, and reproducible. In this paper, a systematic approach to generate the required datasets is introduced to address this need. The underlying notion is based on the concept of profiles which contain detailed descriptions of intrusions and abstract distribution models for applications, protocols, or lower level network entities. Real traces are analyzed to create profiles for agents that generate real traffic for HTTP, SMTP, SSH, IMAP, POP3, and FTP. In this regard, a set of guidelines is established to outline valid datasets, which set the basis for generating profiles. These guidelines are vital for the effectiveness of the dataset in terms of realism, evaluation capabilities, total capture, completeness, and malicious activity. The profiles are then employed in an experiment to generate the desirable dataset in a testbed environment. Various multi-stage attacks scenarios were subsequently carried out to supply the anomalous portion of the dataset. The intent for this dataset is to assist various researchers in acquiring datasets of this kind for testing, evaluation, and comparison purposes, through sharing the generated datasets and profiles. The increasing practicality of large-scale flow capture makes it possible to conceive of traffic analysis methods that detect and identify a large and diverse set of anomalies. However the challenge of effectively analyzing this massive data source for anomaly diagnosis is as yet unmet. We argue that the distributions of packet features (IP addresses and ports) observed in flow traces reveals both the presence and the structure of a wide range of anomalies. Using entropy as a summarization tool, we show that the analysis of feature distributions leads to significant advances on two fronts: (1) it enables highly sensitive detection of a wide range of anomalies, augmenting detections by volume-based methods, and (2) it enables automatic classification of anomalies via unsupervised learning. We show that using feature distributions, anomalies naturally fall into distinct and meaningful clusters. These clusters can be used to automatically classify anomalies and to uncover new anomaly types. We validate our claims on data from two backbone networks (Abilene and Geant) and conclude that feature distributions show promise as a key element of a fairly general network anomaly diagnosis framework. It is an undeniable fact that currently information is a pretty significant presence for all companies or organizations. Therefore protecting its security is crucial and the security models driven by real datasets has become quite important. The operations based on military, government, commercial and civilians are linked to the security and availability of computer systems and network. From this point of security, the network security is a significant issue because the capacity of attacks is unceasingly rising over the years and they turn into be more sophisticated and distributed. The objective of this review is to explain and compare the most commonly used datasets. This paper focuses on the datasets used in artificial intelligent and machine learning techniques, which are the primary tools for analyzing network traffic and detecting abnormalities.