An efficient deep recurrent neural network for detection of cyberattacks in realistic IoT environment

The rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has changed human interactions with the environment. IoT networks require specialized defense strategies distinct from traditional corporate contexts. Security measures such as anti-malware software, firewalls, authentication protocols, and encryption techniques are established but face limitations against evolving attack strategies. Therefore, this study proposes an intrusion detection approach for a realistic IoT environment, employing various variants of deep learning models such as deep neural networks (DNNs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and recurrent neural networks (RNNs). The research tested three variants for each model: DNN1, DNN2, DNN3, CNN1, CNN2, CNN3, RNN1, RNN2, RNN3. All these variants are customized and tuned differently to analyze the efficacy of the suggested methodology. Likewise, notable observation highlights the significance of aligning training and validation accuracy curves that indicate controlled overfitting, validating the model’s reliability in accurately predicting intrusion and benign network traffic in IoT settings. Results reveal that RNN1 achieves the best results: accuracy of 98.61%, precision of 98.55%, recall of 98.61%, and F1-score of 98.57% compared with other DNN and CNN architectures and benchmark papers. This study advances intrusion detection within IoT networks through a comprehensive evaluation of deep learning models and inspires ongoing research to enhance intrusion detection systems’ resilience in dynamic IoT environments.