Novel modeling and optimization for joint Cybersecurity-vs-QoS Intrusion Detection Mechanisms in 5G networks

The rapid emergence of 5G technology brings new cybersecurity challenges that hold significant implications for our economy, society, and environment. Among these challenges, ensuring the effectiveness of Intrusion Detection Mechanisms (IDMs) in monitoring networks and detecting 5G-related cyberattacks is of utmost importance. However, optimizing cybersecurity levels and selecting appropriate IDMs remain as critical and ongoing challenges. This work considers multiple pre-deployed distributed Security Agents (SAs) across the network, each capable of running various IDMs, where they differ by their effectiveness in detecting the attacks (referred to as security term) and the consumption of resources (referred to as Quality of Service (QoS) costs). We formulate a joint security and QoS utility function leveraging the Cobb–Douglas production utility function. There are several parameters that impact the joint objective problem, including the set of elasticity parameters, that reflect the importance of the two objectives. We derive an optimal set of elasticity parameters in closed form to identify the balancing point where both objectives have equal utility values. Through comprehensive simulations, we demonstrate that increasing the detection level of SAs enhances the security utility while simultaneously diminishing the QoS utility, as more computational, bandwidth, and monetary resources are utilized for IDM processing. After optimization, our mechanism can strike an effective balance between cybersecurity and QoS overhead while demonstrating the importance of different parameters in the joint problem.