The New Abnormal: Network Anomalies in the AI Era

Anomaly detection aims at finding unexpected patterns in data. It has been used in several problems in computer networks, from the detection of port scans and DDoS attacks to the monitoring of time-series collected from Internet monitoring systems. Data-driven approaches and machine learning have seen widespread application on anomaly detection too, and this trend has been accelerated by the recent developments on Artificial Intelligence research. This chapter summarizes ongoing recent progresses on anomaly detection research. In particular, we evaluate how developments on AI algorithms bring new possibilities for anomaly detection. We cover new representation learning techniques such as Generative Artificial Networks and Autoencoders, as well as techniques that can be used to improve models learned with machine learning algorithms, such as reinforcement learning. We survey both research works and tools implementing AI algorithms for anomaly detection. We found that the novel algorithms, while successful in other fields, have hardly been applied to networking problems. We conclude the chapter with a case study that illustrates a possible research direction.