Quantum Machine Learning in Log-based Anomaly Detection: Challenges and Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper explores the application of quantum machine learning to log-based anomaly detection, proposing a unified framework to evaluate quantum-enhanced models and compare them with classical methods across multiple metrics.

Contribution

It introduces heirframework{}, a comprehensive framework for evaluating QML models in LogAD, including diverse data, models, and metrics, and assesses quantum versus classical approaches.

Findings

Quantum models can reduce parameters while maintaining accuracy.

Quantum-enhanced models show promising performance in LogAD tasks.

The framework enables detailed comparison of classical and quantum models.

Abstract

Log-based anomaly detection (LogAD) is the main component of Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps), which can detect anomalous that occur during the system on-the-fly. Existing methods commonly extract log sequence features using classical machine learning techniques to identify whether a new sequence is an anomaly or not. However, these classical approaches often require trade-offs between efficiency and accuracy. The advent of quantum machine learning (QML) offers a promising alternative. By transforming parts of classical machine learning computations into parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs), QML can significantly reduce the number of trainable parameters while maintaining accuracy comparable to classical counterparts. In this work, we introduce a unified framework, \ourframework{}, for evaluating QML models in the context of LogAD. This framework incorporates diverse log data, integrated QML models, and comprehensive evaluation metrics. State-of-the-art methods such as DeepLog, LogAnomaly, and LogRobust, along with their quantum-transformed counterparts, are included in our framework.Beyond standard metrics like F1 score, precision, and recall, our evaluation extends to factors critical to QML performance, such as specificity, the number of circuits, circuit design, and quantum state encoding. Using \ourframework{}, we conduct extensive experiments to assess the performance of these models and their quantum counterparts, uncovering valuable insights and paving the way for future research in QML model selection and design for LogAD.