AI-powered phishing detection: Integrating natural language processing and deep learning for email security

Saswata Dey *, Writuraj Sarma and Sundar Tiwari

Independence Researcher.
 
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology and Sciences, 2023, 10(02), 394-415.
Article DOI: 10.30574/wjaets.2023.10.2.0284
Publication history: 
Received on 29 September 2023; revised on 19 November 2023; accepted on 21 November 2023
 
Abstract: 
Phishing attacks are major threats to email security and pose challenges, while cyber attackers utilize increasingly sophisticated means to deceive the user and steal away important information. Well-established ways of detecting phishing attacks, such as rule-based systems or simple machine-learning models, usually cannot deal efficiently with such advanced threats. This research proposes an approach to detect phishing attacks on email systems, which deploys natural language processing and deep learning technologies. The method proposes to improve the detection accuracies and efficiencies of phishing emails, which consequently enhances the protection of emails against popular cyberattack attempts and aids in securing users from such attacks.
The research involves designing an active model that utilizes the strength of NLP-based text analysis for DL-oriented pattern identification. The NLP techniques used in this study include tokenization, stop-word removal, and context-based analysis to extract significant features from the email messages. Such context information greatly helps this model differentiate between actual emails and phishing ones. Deep learning algorithms exploited here are based on CNN and LSTM networks, offering sinusoidally varying parameters for optimum recognition of patterns from different perspectives in the email data's spatial and temporal domains. The experiment results validated that the hybrid model was far superior to the conventional methods in robbing phish attack detection. The model stood at an accuracy of 97.5%, much ahead of the baseline models purely having rule-based systems or traditional machine learning algorithms. The model also performed well under real-time detection conditions, with low latency and high throughput support for deployment in an active email environment. Evidence of the model's capability to sense new variants of future phishing threats also came in the automatic updating and continuous learning, thus making it applicable to newly emerging threats. The study's practical implications are numerous in providing advances in email protection. Companies can use the model to ward off phishing attacks with reduced chances of data breaches and financial loss. Due to its low cost and scalable features, this solution can be used in organizations from small- and medium-sized to large enterprise levels. The improved detection of phishing attacks brings organizations closer to compliance with data protection and cybersecurity regulations, thus minimizing their chances of noncompliance and the fines that come with it. Future research paths include exploring even newer NLP methods consisting of transformer-based models for feature extraction about contextual understanding. Exploring hybrid approaches that can merge DL with other techniques, such as reinforcement learning in ML, will create a more robust and adaptive phishing filter. Future fields for research are multimodal data, that is, a mixture of email metadata and behavior. Merely considering hybrid techniques merging artificial intelligence with machine learning approaches such as reinforcement learning can generate an even more robust and adaptive phishing filter. Coupling all these technical solutions with user awareness and education programs would greatly enhance overall security. 
 
Keywords: 
Phishing Detection; Natural Language Processing; Deep Learning; Email Security; Cybersecurity
 
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Copyright information: 
Copyright © 2023 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0