Role of K-means Clustering in Security Domain

K-Means Clustering is an unsupervised learning algorithm that is used to solve the clustering problems in machine learning or data science.

In Supervised machine learning in which models are trained using labeled data under the supervision of training data. But there may be many cases in which we do not have labeled data and need to find the hidden patterns from the given dataset , Unsupervised learning is a machine learning technique in which models are not supervised using training dataset. Instead, models itself find the hidden patterns and insights from the given data.

The goal of unsupervised learning is to find the underlying structure of dataset, group that data according to similarities, and represent that dataset in a compressed format.

Suppose the unsupervised learning algorithm is given an input dataset containing images of different types of cats and dogs. The algorithm is never trained upon the given dataset, which means it does not have any idea about the features of the dataset. The task of the unsupervised learning algorithm is to identify the image features on their own. Unsupervised learning algorithm will perform this task by clustering the image dataset into the groups according to similarities between images.

K means clustering is an iterative algorithm that divides the unlabeled dataset into k different clusters in such a way that each dataset belongs only one group that has similar properties.

It is a centroid-based algorithm, where each cluster is associated with a centroid. The main aim of this algorithm is to minimize the sum of distances between the data point and their corresponding clusters. The algorithm takes the unlabeled dataset as input, divides the dataset into k-number of clusters, and repeats the process until it does not find the best clusters. The value of k should be predetermined in this algorithm.

The K-means clustering algorithm mainly performs two tasks:

• Determines the best value for K center points or centroids by an iterative process.
• Assigns each data point to its closest k-center. Those data points which are near to the particular k-center, create a cluster.

The working of the K-Means algorithm is explained in the below steps:

Step-1: Select the number K to decide the number of clusters.

Step-2: Select random K points or centroids. (It can be other from the input dataset).

Step-3: Assign each data point to their closest centroid, which will form the predefined K clusters.

Step-4: Calculate the variance and place a new centroid of each cluster.

Step-5: Repeat the third steps, which means reassign each datapoint to the new closest centroid of each cluster.

Step-6: If any reassignment occurs, then go to step-4 else go to FINISH.

Step-7: The model is ready.

Use-Cases of K-means Cluster in the Security Domain:

Identifying crime localities

With data related to crimes available in specific localities in a city, the category of crime, the area of the crime, and the association between the two can give quality insight into crime-prone areas within a city or a locality.

Insurance fraud detection

Machine learning has a critical role to play in fraud detection and has numerous applications in automobile, healthcare, and insurance fraud detection. Utilizing past historical data on fraudulent claims, it is possible to isolate new claims based on its proximity to clusters that indicate fraudulent patterns. since insurance fraud can potentially have a multi-million dollar impact on a company, the ability to detect frauds is crucial.

Cyber-profiling criminals

cyber-profiling is the process of collecting data from individuals and groups to identify significant co-relations. the idea of cyber profiling is derived from criminal profiles, which provide information on the investigation division to classify the types of criminals who were at the crime scene.

Automatic clustering of it alerts

large enterprise it infrastructure technology components such as network, storage, or database generate large volumes of alert messages. because alert messages potentially point to operational issues, they must be manually screened for prioritization for downstream processes. clustering of data can provide insight into categories of alerts and mean time to repair, and help in failure prediction.

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