Posted: 12-10-2024

Title: Data Science and Machine Learning applications to Cyber Security

Location: Army Research Lab – Aberdeen Proving Ground – Aberdeen, MD

Description: Machine Learning (ML) and data science have become integral parts of many domains (e.g., image analysis, networking protocols, network security, etc.), resulting in increased motivation for applications to cyber defense tools. Furthermore, the rapid rate of attacks and the immense volume of data significantly increase the demand on a small number of human analysts. This necessitates the use of data science and ML techniques to enable scalability and reduce the demand on human analysts. However, there are many challenges in the successful use of data science and ML for cyber security problems. Increasingly, supervised learning relies on a significant amount of quality labeled data. To avoid the requirement for a significant amount of labeled data, it is necessary to innovate semi-supervised methodologies in a resource-constrained domain for network communications in the cyber domain. In the network/communications domain, machine learning-based classifiers are generally trained within a closed environment. Specifically, datasets used for training and evaluation are static and do not vary. Conversely, network environments are dynamic over time. Adversaries’ attacks become more sophisticated and change in response to defenders’ actions, requiring a defender to retrain a classifier to reflect the new attacks in the intended environment for deployment.

This research is focused on data science and ML applications to network traffic (i.e., network traffic analysis, network forensics). Example key research questions include the following:

• How do we design ML-based network traffic classifiers using a limited amount of data?
• How do we leverage ML for network traffic classifiers in a resource-constrained environment?
• How can we apply ML to network forensics problems?

Requirements: Python Programming, Cyber Security Fundamentals, Networking Basics, Exposure to Data Science and Machine Learning

Level: Multiple Classifications

Required Major(s): Cyber Security, Computer Science, Computer Engineering