Anomaly Detection Using Data Mining Methods in IT Systems: A Decision Support Application

Abstract

Although there are various studies on anomaly detection, simple and effective anomaly detection approaches are still necessary due to the lack of appropriate approaches for large-scale network environments. In the existing analysis methods, it is seen that the methods of preliminary analysis are generally used, the extrapolations and probabilities are not taken into account and the unsupervised neural network (NN) methods are not used enough. As an alternative, the use of the Self-Organizing Maps has been preferred in the study. In other studies, analysis of data obtained from network traffic is analyzed, here, analysis of other information systems data and suggestions for alternative solutions are given, too. In addition, in-memory database systems have been used in practice in order to enable faster processing in analysis studies, due to the large size of data to be analyzed in large-scale network environments. An analysis of the application log data obtained from the management tools in the information systems was carried out. After anomaly detection results obtained and the verification test results are compared, it is found out that anomaly detection process is successful by 96%. The advantage offered for the company and users at IT and security monitoring processes is to eliminate the need for pre-qualification and to reduce the heavy workload. By this way, it is thought that a significant cost item is eliminated. It is also contemplated that the security vulnerabilities and problems associated with unpredictable issues will be detected through practice and thus many attacks and problems will be prevented in advance.