Machine learning and soft computing for ICT security: an overview of current trends

In the last years, people have been seeing the pervasive use of computer, communication technology and Internet, e.g., e-mail, online shopping, banking, gaming, Internet telephony, streaming. Unfortunately, the reliability of the Internet and its services, and in general Information and Communication Technology (ICT) devices, is undermined by insecurity issues. On the other hand, machine learning and soft computing techniques have been widely applied to disparate fields, becoming, in several cases, the leading technology. The aim of the work is to investigate the trends of the machine learning (ML) and soft computing (SC) methodologies for ICT security. In particular, it overviews ML and SC applications for three hot topics in ICT security: password-based schemes for access control, intrusion detection and spam filtering.