IIoT Malware Detection Using Edge Computing and Deep Learning for Cybersecurity in Smart Factories

The smart factory environment has been transformed into an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environment, which is an interconnected and open approach. This has made smart manufacturing plants vulnerable to cyberattacks that can directly lead to physical damage. Most cyberattacks targeting smart factories are carried out using malware. Thus, a solution that efficiently detects malware by monitoring and analyzing network traffic for malware attacks in smart factory IIoT environments is critical. However, achieving accurate real-time malware detection in such environments is difficult. To solve this problem, this study proposes an edge computing-based malware detection system that efficiently detects various cyberattacks (malware) by distributing vast amounts of smart factory IIoT traffic information to edge servers for deep learning processing. The proposed malware detection system consists of three layers (edge device, edge, and cloud layers) and utilizes four meaningful functions (model training and testing, model deployment, model inference, and training data transmission) for edge-based deep learning. In experiments conducted on the Malimg dataset, the proposed malware detection system incorporating a convolutional neural network with image visualization technology achieved an overall classification accuracy of 98.93%, precision of 98.93%, recall of 98.93%, and F1-score of 98.92%.