Performance Evaluation of Deep Learning Models for Classifying Cybersecurity Attacks in IoT Networks

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) presents great potential in various fields such as home automation, healthcare, and industry, among others, but its infrastructure, the use of open source code, and lack of software updates make it vulnerable to cyberattacks that can compromise access to data and services, thus making it an attractive target for hackers. The complexity of cyberattacks has increased, posing a greater threat to public and private organizations. This study evaluated the performance of deep learning models for classifying cybersecurity attacks in IoT networks, using the CICIoT2023 dataset. Three architectures based on DNN, LSTM, and CNN were compared, highlighting their differences in layers and activation functions. The results show that the CNN architecture outperformed the others in accuracy and computational efficiency, with an accuracy rate of 99.10% for multiclass classification and 99.40% for binary classification. The importance of data standardization and proper hyperparameter selection is emphasized. These results demonstrate that the CNN-based model emerges as a promising option for detecting cyber threats in IoT environments, supporting the relevance of deep learning in IoT network security.