ComEngApp : Computer Engineering and Applications Journal
Vol. 15 No. 2 (2026)

Hybrid Interpretable and Deep Learning Models for Intrusion Detection in Large-Scale Network Traffic: An Intelligent and Scalable Approach for Detecting Complex and Evolving Network Threats

Chintureena Thingom (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Aditya University, Surampalem, Andhra Pradesh 533437, India.)
Harikeerthan MK (Unknown)
Cloudin S (Unknown)
Lokeshwaran K (Unknown)
Praveena K (Unknown)
Prasanna Kumar K.R (Unknown)
Deepa P (Unknown)
Kishore Chandra Dev Nakka (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Jun 2026

Abstract

The fast growth of cyber-attacks and network traffic, have put forward the requirement of autonomous and scalable IDSs that can accurately discern among normal and malicious activities. In this paper, a hybrid machine learning (ML)-based IDS model, DTCNN-IDS, is presented by combining Decision Tree (DT), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and TabTransformer. The framework is tested against the KDD99 data set, containing 4,898,431 network records with continuous and categorical fields. A uniform pipeline with preprocessing, encoding, normalization, and multi-class supervised learning (M2A approach) allows for robust model evaluation. DT produces high accuracy (99.99%) but biased results on minority attacks (U2R recall = 0.72, R2L recall = 0.76) as a result of class imbalance. CNN enhances the nonlinear feature learning and achieves an accuracy of 99.7% with the precision, recall and F1-score of 0.996. The best-performing model is TabTransformer, achieving accuracy of 99.8%, precision of 0.997, recall of 0.998 and F1-score of 0.997, which also significantly improves detection of minority attacks. The improved sensitivity and stability are further confirmed by the Precision–Recall, scalability analyses and statistical testing (p < 0.05) validates the significance of results.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

comengapp

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Engineering

Description

ComEngApp-Journal (Collaboration between University of Sriwijaya, Kirklareli University and IAES) is an international forum for scientists and engineers involved in all aspects of computer engineering and technology to publish high quality and refereed papers. This Journal is an open access journal ...