@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}
}
@article{LaskovGehlKruegeretal.2006,
  author    = {Laskov, Pavel and Gehl, Christian and Kr{\"u}ger, Stefan and M{\"u}ller, Klaus-Robert},
  title     = {Incremental support vector learning: analysis, implementation and applications},
  series = {Journal of machine learning research},
  volume    = {7},
  journal   = {Journal of machine learning research},
  publisher = {MIT Press},
  address   = {Cambridge, Mass.},
  issn      = {1532-4435},
  pages     = {1909 -- 1936},
  year      = {2006},
  abstract  = {Incremental Support Vector Machines (SVM) are instrumental in practical applications of online learning. This work focuses on the design and analysis of efficient incremental SVM learning, with the aim of providing a fast, numerically stable and robust implementation. A detailed analysis of convergence and of algorithmic complexity of incremental SVM learning is carried out. Based on this analysis, a new design of storage and numerical operations is proposed, which speeds up the training of an incremental SVM by a factor of 5 to 20. The performance of the new algorithm is demonstrated in two scenarios: learning with limited resources and active learning. Various applications of the algorithm, such as in drug discovery, online monitoring of industrial devices and and surveillance of network traffic, can be foreseen.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Jaeger2018,
  author    = {Jaeger, David},
  title     = {Enabling Big Data security analytics for advanced network attack detection},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43571},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-435713},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {XVII, 201, XXXIII},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {The last years have shown an increasing sophistication of attacks against enterprises. Traditional security solutions like firewalls, anti-virus systems and generally Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are no longer sufficient to protect an enterprise against these advanced attacks. One popular approach to tackle this issue is to collect and analyze events generated across the IT landscape of an enterprise. This task is achieved by the utilization of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. However, the majority of the currently existing SIEM solutions is not capable of handling the massive volume of data and the diversity of event representations. Even if these solutions can collect the data at a central place, they are neither able to extract all relevant information from the events nor correlate events across various sources. Hence, only rather simple attacks are detected, whereas complex attacks, consisting of multiple stages, remain undetected. Undoubtedly, security operators of large enterprises are faced with a typical Big Data problem. In this thesis, we propose and implement a prototypical SIEM system named Real-Time Event Analysis and Monitoring System (REAMS) that addresses the Big Data challenges of event data with common paradigms, such as data normalization, multi-threading, in-memory storage, and distributed processing. In particular, a mostly stream-based event processing workflow is proposed that collects, normalizes, persists and analyzes events in near real-time. In this regard, we have made various contributions in the SIEM context. First, we propose a high-performance normalization algorithm that is highly parallelized across threads and distributed across nodes. Second, we are persisting into an in-memory database for fast querying and correlation in the context of attack detection. Third, we propose various analysis layers, such as anomaly- and signature-based detection, that run on top of the normalized and correlated events. As a result, we demonstrate our capabilities to detect previously known as well as unknown attack patterns. Lastly, we have investigated the integration of cyber threat intelligence (CTI) into the analytical process, for instance, for correlating monitored user accounts with previously collected public identity leaks to identify possible compromised user accounts. In summary, we show that a SIEM system can indeed monitor a large enterprise environment with a massive load of incoming events. As a result, complex attacks spanning across the whole network can be uncovered and mitigated, which is an advancement in comparison to existing SIEM systems on the market.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Sapegin2018,
  author    = {Sapegin, Andrey},
  title     = {High-Speed Security Log Analytics Using Hybrid Outlier Detection},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-42611},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-426118},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {162},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {The rapid development and integration of Information Technologies over the last decades influenced all areas of our life, including the business world. Yet not only the modern enterprises become digitalised, but also security and criminal threats move into the digital sphere. To withstand these threats, modern companies must be aware of all activities within their computer networks. The keystone for such continuous security monitoring is a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system that collects and processes all security-related log messages from the entire enterprise network. However, digital transformations and technologies, such as network virtualisation and widespread usage of mobile communications, lead to a constantly increasing number of monitored devices and systems. As a result, the amount of data that has to be processed by a SIEM system is increasing rapidly. Besides that, in-depth security analysis of the captured data requires the application of rather sophisticated outlier detection algorithms that have a high computational complexity. Existing outlier detection methods often suffer from performance issues and are not directly applicable for high-speed and high-volume analysis of heterogeneous security-related events, which becomes a major challenge for modern SIEM systems nowadays. This thesis provides a number of solutions for the mentioned challenges. First, it proposes a new SIEM system architecture for high-speed processing of security events, implementing parallel, in-memory and in-database processing principles. The proposed architecture also utilises the most efficient log format for high-speed data normalisation. Next, the thesis offers several novel high-speed outlier detection methods, including generic Hybrid Outlier Detection that can efficiently be used for Big Data analysis. Finally, the special User Behaviour Outlier Detection is proposed for better threat detection and analysis of particular user behaviour cases. The proposed architecture and methods were evaluated in terms of both performance and accuracy, as well as compared with classical architecture and existing algorithms. These evaluations were performed on multiple data sets, including simulated data, well-known public intrusion detection data set, and real data from the large multinational enterprise. The evaluation results have proved the high performance and efficacy of the developed methods. All concepts proposed in this thesis were integrated into the prototype of the SIEM system, capable of high-speed analysis of Big Security Data, which makes this integrated SIEM platform highly relevant for modern enterprise security applications.},
  language  = {en}
}