Intelligent Network Management and Control. Badr Benmammar

Systems and Communication Engineering

       PE7_1 Control engineering

       PE7_8 Networks (communication networks, sensor networks, networks of robots, etc.)

      Introduction

       Badr BENMAMMAR

       Abou Bekr Belkaid University, Tlemcen, Algeria

      Computer network management and control previously involved mainly purely technical tasks of network equipment maintenance, with the goal of ensuring their proper operation and further development.

      Due to the current emergence of computer networks and the development of a steadily growing number of applications able to operate on a network (and more generally on the Internet), the management and control of a computer network can no longer do without artificial intelligence throughout its stages.

      This is what our introductory book to intelligent management and control of computer networks endeavors to prove. Our aim is to present the use of artificial intelligence in networks through their intelligent control.

      The main objective of artificial intelligence is to design systems that are able to replicate human behavior in its reasoning activities. Defining artificial intelligence is nevertheless not a simple task. The extent of the field is such that it is impossible to narrow it down to a specific field of research.

      According to the definition given by one of its creators, Marvin Lee Minsky, artificial intelligence is “the construction of computer programs that engage in tasks that are currently more satisfactorily performed by human beings because they require high-level mental processes such as: perceptual learning, memory organization and critical reasoning”.

In computer networks, artificial intelligence applications relate to several domains, such as intelligent radio communications, new communication architectures, cloud computing, network optimization and security.

      This book addresses topical issues that are mainly related to intelligent security for computer networks, deployment of security services in software-defined networking (SDN), optimization of networks by means of artificial intelligence techniques and multiple criteria optimization methods for the selection of networks in a heterogeneous environment. The book deals also with the selection of cloud computing services, intelligent computation offloading in the context of mobile cloud computing, smart management of resources in a smart grid-cloud system for better energy efficiency, Internet of vehicles (IoV), relying on its new architectures, artificial intelligence application in cognitive radio networks and finally the contribution of intelligent radio to addressing the road communication needs of autonomous vehicles.

      The various subjects dealt with in this book are organized in parts, each of which contains two chapters. This structure is intended to make it easier for the reader to comprehend the contribution of artificial intelligence to each specific field.

PART 1 AI and Network Security

      1

      Intelligent Security of Computer Networks

       Abderrazaq SEMMOUD and Badr BENMAMMAR

       Abou Bekr Belkaid University, Tlemcen, Algeria

1.1. Introduction

      Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have rapidly progressed in recent years, facilitating the development of a broad range of applications. For example, AI is an essential component of widely used technologies such as automatic speech recognition, machine translation, spam filters and facial recognition. Promising technologies are currently the object of research or small-scale pilot projects, among which it is worth mentioning self-driving cars, digital assistants and drones activated by AI. Looking further into the future, advanced AI may reduce the need for human labor and improve governance quality.

      A wide variety of tasks are automated using AI. Games, car driving and image classification are some of the tasks commonly studied by AI researchers. A broad set of tasks can be transformed by AI. At the very least, every task requiring human intelligence is a potential target for AI innovation. While the field of AI dates back to 1950, several years of rapid progress and growth have recently led to higher reliability. Sudden performance gains have been accomplished by researchers in a number of fields. Figure 1.1 illustrates this trend in the case of image recognition, where over the past few years AI systems have increased their performance in terms of classification accuracy from about 70% to nearly perfect classification accuracy (98%), which surpasses the human reference (95%) (Brundage et al. 2018).

Figure 1.1. Progress in image recognition (benchmark ImageNet), “Electronic Frontier Foundation’s AI Progress Measurement” (August 2017)

      From a security perspective, a number of AI developments are worth mentioning. For example, target-face recognition and space navigation capacities are applicable to autonomous weapons systems. Similarly, image, text and voice generation possibilities could be used online to imitate other persons or influence public opinion by disseminating AI-generated content via social networks. These technical developments can also be considered early indicators of the potential of AI. Unsurprisingly, AI systems may soon qualify for an even wider range of security related tasks.

      Information security is defined as the protection of computer systems against any unauthorized access, use, disruption, modification or destruction in order to provide confidentiality, integrity and availability (Peltier 2010). Information security does not refer to any particular security technology, but rather to a strategy involving persons, processes, rules and tools required in order to detect, prevent, document and mitigate current threats. With increasingly interconnected networks, security services are becoming ever more important. Connectivity is no longer an option in the commercial world, and its potential risks do not outweigh its advantages. Consequently, cybersecurity services should offer adequate protection to companies operating in a relatively open environment. Compared to classical approaches to computer security, several new hypotheses related to current computer networks should be formulated:

       – modern networks are very large and further interconnected, and they are more accessible; consequently, potential attackers can easily connect and access these networks remotely;

       – network interconnection increases the probability of attacks directed at large size networks such as the Internet by means of a set of widely known and open protocols.

      The complexity of computer systems and applications is steadily growing. Consequently, it has become increasingly difficult to correctly analyze, secure and test computer system security. When these systems and their applications are connected to large networks, the risk of threats significantly increases. In view of adequate protection of computer networks, the deployed procedures and technologies must ensure (Khidzir et al. 2018):

       – confidentiality: due to data confidentiality, only authorized users have access to sensitive information;

       – integrity: due to data integrity, only authorized users can modify sensitive information; integrity could also ensure data authenticity;

       – availability: due to system and data availability, authorized users have uninterrupted access to resources and important data.

      The