My personal blog on machine learning, cybersecurity and AI
Long ago, the introduction of the internet moved crime from physical to digital locations, where anti-fraud actors play a high-stakes game of detection and prevention, always working to stay one step ahead of fraudsters. The battles of modern-day cybercrime follow the same pattern, with one major difference – cybercriminals are far more sophisticated than they... Continue Reading →
A Naive Bayes Classifier is a supervised machine-learning algorithm that uses the Bayes’ Theorem, which assumes that features are statistically independent. The theorem relies on the naive assumption that input variables are independent of each other, i.e. there is no way to know anything about other variables when given an additional variable. Regardless of this assumption, it... Continue Reading →
Previously in this series, we have looked at decision trees and random forests, two types of supervised learning algorithms. Supervised algorithms are trained with data that provides input vectors as well as their corresponding target vectors, or the output that is expected after the data is processed. Unsupervised models, on the other hand, are trained using data... Continue Reading →
Random Forests are supervised ensemble-learning models used for classification and regression. Ensemble learning models aggregate multiple machine learning models, allowing for overall better performance. The logic behind this is that each of the models used is weak when employed on its own, but strong when put together in an ensemble. In the case of Random... Continue Reading →
Recently, we published a research paper showing how it is possible to detect fraudulent credit card transactions with a high level of accuracy and a low number of false positives. By using ensembles of cost-sensitive decision trees, we can save up to 73 percent of losses stemming from fraud. Here’s how. Classification, in the context... Continue Reading →
A Decision Tree is a supervised predictive model that can learn to predict discrete or continuous outputs by answering a set of simple questions based on the values of the input features it receives. To get a better understanding of how DT works, we will use a real-world dataset to better illustrate the concept. This... Continue Reading →
Online, or real-time, transactional fraud detection systems have recently created quite the buzz in the info security industry. They are an appealing concept: Because we know that fraud patterns change over time, the ability to use machine-learning algorithms to automatically learn new patterns instantly allows us to have a stronger defense system. We often find... Continue Reading →
Recently, we have seen a huge boom around the field of deep learning; it is currently being implemented in a wide variety of fields, from driverless cars to product recommendation. In their most primitive form, deep learning algorithms originated in the 1960s. If the concept has been around for decades, why is it that widespread... Continue Reading →
In a recent research paper, we showed how we are able to detect with a high level of accuracy if a website is a phish just by looking at the URL. This post lays out in greater detail how, by using a deep recurrent neural network, we’re able to accurately classify more than 98 percent... Continue Reading →
