Cloud-Cyber Physical Systems: Enhanced Metaheuristics with Hierarchical Deep Learning-based Cyberattack Detection

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) integrate several interconnected physical processes, networking units, and computing resources, along with monitoring the processes of the computing system. The connection between the cyber and physical world creates threatening security problems, particularly with the growing complexities of transmission networks. Despite efforts to overcome this challenge, it remains challenging to analyze and detect cyber-physical attacks in CPS. This study mainly focuses on the development of Enhanced Metaheuristics with Hierarchical Deep Learning-based Attack Detection (EMHDL-AD) method in a cloud-based CPS environment. The proposed EMHDL-AD method identifies various types of attacks to protect CPS. In the initial stage, data preprocessing is implemented to convert the input dataset into a useful format. Then, the Quantum Harris Hawks Optimization (QHHO) algorithm is used for feature selection. An Improved Salp Swarm Algorithm (ISSA) is used to optimize the hyperparameters of the HDL technique to recognize several attacks. The performance of the EMHDL-AD algorithm was examined using two benchmark intrusion datasets, and the experimental results indicated improvements over other existing approaches.