Comparison of Gain Ratio and Chi-Square Feature Selection Methods in Improving SVM Performance on IDS

An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a security technology designed to identify and monitor suspicious activity in a computer network or system and detect potential attacks or security breaches. The importance of accuracy in IDS must be addressed, given that the response to any alert or activity generated by the system must be precise and measurable. However, achieving high accuracy in IDS requires a process that takes work. The complex network environment and the diversity of attacks led to significant challenges in developing IDS. The application of algorithms and optimization techniques needs to be considered to improve the accuracy of IDS. Support vector machine (SVM) is one data mining method with a high accuracy level in classifying network data packet patterns. A feature selection stage is needed for an optimal classification process, which can also be applied to SVM. Feature selection is an essential step in the data preprocessing phase; optimization of data input can improve the performance of the SVM algorithm, so this study compares the performance between feature selection algorithms, namely Information Gain Ratio and Chi-Square, and then classifies IDS data using the SVM algorithm. This outcome implies the importance of selecting the right features to develop an effective IDS.