In the last few years, cyberattacks have become more complex, and it is becoming increasingly necessary to establish secure networks. This study examines enhancements to intrusion detection systems (IDSs) with the implementation of machine learning for the categorization of network traffic attacks. For the current study, we utilize four publicly available datasets: CICIDS2017, CIC-DoS2017, CSE-CIC-IDS2018, and CIC-DDoS2019. We examined three machine learning techniques: LightGBM, Random Forest, and XGBoost. Experimental results showed that RandomForest and XGBoost achieved the highest accuracy of 0.99 in both binary and multi-class intrusion detection tasks, maintaining balanced performance with macro F1-scores around 0.86. LightGBM exhibited slightly lower overall performance, but benefited from ANOVA-based feature selection, which improved its recall and model stability. Feature selection also enhanced computational efficiency by reducing feature redundancy while preserving accuracy across models. These results highlight how AI tools could help network security deal with emerging threats and improve the performance of IDS. The study underscores the critical role of feature selection in enhancing model efficiency, hence promoting advancements in automated network security systems that can adapt to evolving cyber threats.

This study provides a detailed comparative analysis of a three-hybrid intrusion detection method aimed at strengthening network security through precise and adaptive threat identification. The proposed framework integrates an Autoencoder-Gaussian Mixture Model (AE-GMM) with two supervised learning techniques, XGBoost and Logistic Regression, combining deep feature extraction with interpretability and stable generalization. Although the downstream classifiers are trained in a supervised manner, the hybrid intrusion detection nature of the framework is preserved through unsupervised representation learning and probabilistic modeling in the AE-GMM stage. Two benchmark datasets were used for evaluation: NSL-KDD, representing traditional network behavior, and UNSW-NB15, reflecting modern and diverse traffic patterns. A consistent preprocessing pipeline was applied, including normalization, feature selection, and dimensionality reduction, to ensure fair comparison and efficient training. The experimental findings show that hybridizing deep learning with gradient-boosted and linear classifiers markedly enhances detection performance and resilience. The AE–GMM-XGBoost model achieved superior outcomes, reaching an F1-score above 0.94 ± 0.0021 and an AUC greater than 0.97 on both datasets, demonstrating high accuracy in distinguishing legitimate and malicious traffic. AE-GMM-Logistic Regression also achieved strong and balanced performance, recording an F1-score exceeding 0.91 ± 0.0020 with stable generalization across test conditions. Conversely, the standalone AE-GMM effectively captured deep latent patterns but exhibited lower recall, indicating limited sensitivity to subtle or emerging attacks. These results collectively confirm that integrating autoencoder-based representation learning with advanced supervised models significantly improves intrusion detection in complex network settings. The proposed framework therefore provides a solid and extensible basis for future research in explainable and federated intrusion detection, supporting the development of adaptive and proactive cybersecurity defenses.

The growing prevalence of encrypted network traffic has rendered traditional payload-based inspection ineffective, shifting attention toward flow-level statistical analysis combined with machine learning. At the same time, privacy regulations and distributed network architectures make centralised data collection increasingly impractical, motivating federated learning as a privacy-preserving alternative. Despite its promise, deploying federated learning for encrypted traffic classification in realistic environments remains challenging, particularly under heterogeneous client data distributions that arise when different network sites observe different subsets of services. This paper examines how server-side aggregation affects federated QUIC traffic classification under such heterogeneous conditions. We use a five-class Google QUIC dataset and represent each flow with eight statistical features derived from packet size and timing. We compare a centralised baseline with federated learning under three client partitions: mixed-label clients (C1), service-based single-class clients (C2), and hash-based semi-IID clients (C3). For each case, we evaluate four Flower aggregation strategies: FedAvg, FedAdam, FedAvgM, and FedYogi. Results show that client distribution has a greater impact on performance than the choice of aggregation strategy. Federated models match or closely approach centralised performance in C1 and C3, with accuracy up to 0.9969 and macro-AUC near 1.0. In C2, accuracy drops due to extreme label skew, but adaptive aggregation mitigates the effect. FedYogi achieves the best C2 accuracy of 0.9287, while FedAvgM attains the highest C2 macro-AUC of 0.9885. ROC curves and confusion matrices confirm that the choice of aggregation matters mainly under severe heterogeneity.