Optimizing feature selection in intrusion detection systems: Pareto dominance set approaches with mutual information and linear correlation ☆

In the realm of network intrusion detection using machine learning, feature selection aims for computational efficiency, enhanced performance, and model interpretability, preventing overfitting and optimizing data visualization. This paper proposes a filtering method for feature selection, which optimizes information quantity and linear correlation between resultant features. The method identifies Pareto dominant pairs of informative and correlated features, constructs a graph, and selects key features based on betweenness centrality in its connected components. The proposal yields a more concise and informative dataset representation. Experimental results, using three diverse datasets, demonstrate that the proposal achieves more than 95% accuracy in classifying network attacks with just 14% of the total number features in original datasets.