Enhancing Anomaly Detection in Complex Systems through Context Discovery
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55640/Keywords:
Anomaly Detection, Context-Aware, Machine LearningAbstract
Background: The increasing complexity and interconnectedness of modern systems across various domains have made effective anomaly detection a critical task. However, traditional anomaly detection techniques often operate in a context-agnostic manner, leading to sub-optimal performance characterized by high false-positive rates and an inability to detect subtle, context-dependent anomalies [1, 16]. This limitation is particularly pronounced in systems where the definition of "normal" behavior is highly dependent on situational factors such as time of day, network topology, or system state.
Objective: This study aims to address the limitations of conventional anomaly detection by proposing a novel framework that systematically discovers and integrates contextual information. The primary objective is to demonstrate that by leveraging context, detection models can achieve significantly improved accuracy and reliability in identifying deviations from normal behavior.
Methods: Our framework employs a multi-stage approach, beginning with the identification of relevant contextual features from the dataset. These features are then used to condition the anomaly detection process. The proposed model is compared against widely-used baseline models such as Isolation Forest and Local Outlier Factor (LOF) [2, 8] using a dataset derived from a complex system. Performance is evaluated using standard metrics, including precision, recall, and the F1-score.
Results: The experimental results show that the context-aware approach consistently outperforms traditional methods, achieving a higher F1-score and significantly reducing the false-positive rate. The integration of contextual data enables the model to accurately classify behaviors that would otherwise be misidentified by conventional techniques.
Conclusion: This research demonstrates the paramount importance of context discovery for effective anomaly detection. The proposed framework provides a robust and practical method for integrating contextual information, leading to more accurate, reliable, and actionable anomaly detection in complex systems.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Dr. Elara V. Thorne (Author)
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