Articulation and Clarification of the Dendritic Cell Algorithm

TL;DR

This paper provides a formal description of the Dendritic Cell Algorithm (DCA), demonstrating its application as an anomaly detector in computer security, with experimental analysis on signal influence and detection performance.

Contribution

It offers the first formal description of the DCA and evaluates its effectiveness in anomaly detection within cybersecurity contexts.

Findings

Signal selection significantly affects DCA behavior

Different input signal mappings impact detection performance

Experimental results validate DCA's utility in anomaly detection

Abstract

The Dendritic Cell algorithm (DCA) is inspired by recent work in innate immunity. In this paper a formal description of the DCA is given. The DCA is described in detail, and its use as an anomaly detector is illustrated within the context of computer security. A port scan detection task is performed to substantiate the influence of signal selection on the behaviour of the algorithm. Experimental results provide a comparison of differing input signal mappings.