One-Class Anomaly Detection for Industrial Applications: A Comparative Survey and Experimental Study
Davide Paolini, Pierpaolo Dini, Ettore Soldaini, Sergio Saponara
Abstract
This article aims to evaluate the runtime effectiveness of various one-class classification (OCC) techniques for anomaly detection in an industrial scenario reproduced in a laboratory setting. To address the limitations posed by restricted access to proprietary data, the study explores OCC methods that learn solely from legitimate network traffic, without requiring labeled malicious samples. After analyzing major publicly available datasets, such as KDD Cup 1999 and TON-IoT, as well as the most widely used OCC techniques, a lightweight and modular intrusion detection system (IDS) was developed in Python. The system was tested in real time on an experimental platform based on Raspberry Pi, within a simulated client–server environment using the NFSv4 protocol over TCP/UDP. Several OCC models were compared, including One-Class SVM, Autoencoder, VAE, and Isolation Forest. The results showed strong performance in terms of detection accuracy and low latency, with the best outcomes achieved using the UNSW-NB15 dataset. The article concludes with a discussion of additional strategies to enhance the runtime analysis of these algorithms, offering insights into potential future applications and improvement directions.