Robust and scalable trust management for collaborative intrusion detection

The accuracy of detecting intrusions within an intrusion detection network (IDN) depends on the efficiency of collaboration between the peer intrusion detection systems (IDSes) as well as the security itself of the IDN against insider threats. In this paper, we study host-based IDNs and introduce a Dirichlet-based model to measure the level of trustworthiness among peer IDSes according to their mutual experience. The model has strong scalability properties and is robust against common insider threats, such as a compromised or malfunctioning peer. We evaluate our system based on a simulated collaborative host-based IDS network. The experimental results demonstrate the improved robustness, efficiency, and scalability of our system in detecting intrusions in comparison with existing models.