A wrapper-based feature selection for improving performance of intrusion detection systems

Along with expansion in using of Internet and computer networks, the privacy, integrity, and access to digital resources have been faced with permanent risks. Due to the unpredictable behavior of network, the nonlinear nature of intrusion attempts, and the vast number of features in the problem environment, intrusion detection system (IDS) is regarded as the main problem in the security of computer networks. A feature selection technique helps to reduce complexity in terms of both the executive load and the storage by selecting the optimal subset of features. The purpose of this study is to identify important and key features in building an IDS. To improve the performance of IDS, this paper proposes an IDS that its features are optimally selected using a new hybrid method based on fruit fly algorithm (FFA) and ant lion optimizer (ALO) algorithm. The simulation results on the dataset KDD Cup99, NSL-KDD, and UNSW-NB15 have shown that the FFA-ALO has an acceptable performance according to the evaluation criteria such as accuracy and sensitivity than previous approaches.