@phdthesis{Najafi2023,
  author    = {Najafi, Pejman},
  title     = {Leveraging data science \& engineering for advanced security operations},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-61225},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-612257},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xix, 180},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {The Security Operations Center (SOC) represents a specialized unit responsible for managing security within enterprises. To aid in its responsibilities, the SOC relies heavily on a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system that functions as a centralized repository for all security-related data, providing a comprehensive view of the organization's security posture. Due to the ability to offer such insights, SIEMS are considered indispensable tools facilitating SOC functions, such as monitoring, threat detection, and incident response. Despite advancements in big data architectures and analytics, most SIEMs fall short of keeping pace. Architecturally, they function merely as log search engines, lacking the support for distributed large-scale analytics. Analytically, they rely on rule-based correlation, neglecting the adoption of more advanced data science and machine learning techniques. This thesis first proposes a blueprint for next-generation SIEM systems that emphasize distributed processing and multi-layered storage to enable data mining at a big data scale. Next, with the architectural support, it introduces two data mining approaches for advanced threat detection as part of SOC operations. First, a novel graph mining technique that formulates threat detection within the SIEM system as a large-scale graph mining and inference problem, built on the principles of guilt-by-association and exempt-by-reputation. The approach entails the construction of a Heterogeneous Information Network (HIN) that models shared characteristics and associations among entities extracted from SIEM-related events/logs. Thereon, a novel graph-based inference algorithm is used to infer a node's maliciousness score based on its associations with other entities in the HIN. Second, an innovative outlier detection technique that imitates a SOC analyst's reasoning process to find anomalies/outliers. The approach emphasizes explainability and simplicity, achieved by combining the output of simple context-aware univariate submodels that calculate an outlier score for each entry. Both approaches were tested in academic and real-world settings, demonstrating high performance when compared to other algorithms as well as practicality alongside a large enterprise's SIEM system. This thesis establishes the foundation for next-generation SIEM systems that can enhance today's SOCs and facilitate the transition from human-centric to data-driven security operations.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{RanaMohapatraSidorovaetal.2022,
  author    = {Rana, Kaushik and Mohapatra, Durga Prasad and Sidorova, Julia and Lundberg, Lars and Sk{\"o}ld, Lars and Lopes Grim, Lu{\´i}s Fernando and Sampaio Gradvohl, Andr{\´e} Leon and Cremerius, Jonas and Siegert, Simon and Weltzien, Anton von and Baldi, Annika and Klessascheck, Finn and Kalancha, Svitlana and Lichtenstein, Tom and Shaabani, Nuhad and Meinel, Christoph and Friedrich, Tobias and Lenzner, Pascal and Schumann, David and Wiese, Ingmar and Sarna, Nicole and Wiese, Lena and Tashkandi, Araek Sami and van der Walt, Est{\´e}e and Eloff, Jan H. P. and Schmidt, Christopher and H{\"u}gle, Johannes and Horschig, Siegfried and Uflacker, Matthias and Najafi, Pejman and Sapegin, Andrey and Cheng, Feng and Stojanovic, Dragan and Stojnev Ilić, Aleksandra and Djordjevic, Igor and Stojanovic, Natalija and Predic, Bratislav and Gonz{\´a}lez-Jim{\´e}nez, Mario and de Lara, Juan and Mischkewitz, Sven and Kainz, Bernhard and van Hoorn, Andr{\´e} and Ferme, Vincenzo and Schulz, Henning and Knigge, Marlene and Hecht, Sonja and Prifti, Loina and Krcmar, Helmut and Fabian, Benjamin and Ermakova, Tatiana and Kelkel, Stefan and Baumann, Annika and Morgenstern, Laura and Plauth, Max and Eberhard, Felix and Wolff, Felix and Polze, Andreas and Cech, Tim and Danz, Noel and Noack, Nele Sina and Pirl, Lukas and Beilharz, Jossekin Jakob and De Oliveira, Roberto C. L. and Soares, F{\´a}bio Mendes and Juiz, Carlos and Bermejo, Belen and M{\"u}hle, Alexander and Gr{\"u}ner, Andreas and Saxena, Vageesh and Gayvoronskaya, Tatiana and Weyand, Christopher and Krause, Mirko and Frank, Markus and Bischoff, Sebastian and Behrens, Freya and R{\"u}ckin, Julius and Ziegler, Adrian and Vogel, Thomas and Tran, Chinh and Moser, Irene and Grunske, Lars and Sz{\´a}rnyas, G{\´a}bor and Marton, J{\´o}zsef and Maginecz, J{\´a}nos and Varr{\´o}, D{\´a}niel and Antal, J{\´a}nos Benjamin},
  title     = {HPI Future SOC Lab - Proceedings 2018},
  number    = {151},
  editor    = {Meinel, Christoph and Polze, Andreas and Beins, Karsten and Strotmann, Rolf and Seibold, Ulrich and R{\"o}dszus, Kurt and M{\"u}ller, J{\"u}rgen},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-547-7},
  issn      = {1613-5652},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-56371},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-563712},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {x, 277},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The "HPI Future SOC Lab" is a cooperation of the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) and industry partners. Its mission is to enable and promote exchange and interaction between the research community and the industry partners. The HPI Future SOC Lab provides researchers with free of charge access to a complete infrastructure of state of the art hard and software. This infrastructure includes components, which might be too expensive for an ordinary research environment, such as servers with up to 64 cores and 2 TB main memory. The offerings address researchers particularly from but not limited to the areas of computer science and business information systems. Main areas of research include cloud computing, parallelization, and In-Memory technologies. This technical report presents results of research projects executed in 2018. Selected projects have presented their results on April 17th and November 14th 2017 at the Future SOC Lab Day events.},
  language  = {en}
}