Dissect Black Box: Interpreting for Rule-Based Explanations in Unsupervised Anomaly Detection

Abstract

In high-stakes sectors such as network security, IoT security, accurately distinguishing between normal and anomalous data is critical due to the significant implications for operational success and safety in decision-making. The complexity is exacerbated by the presence of unlabeled data and the opaque nature of black-box anomaly detection models, which obscure the rationale behind their predictions. In this paper, we present a novel method to interpret the decision-making processes of these models, which are essential for detecting malicious activities without labeled attack data. We put forward the Segmentation Clustering Decision Tree (SCD-Tree), designed to dissect and understand the structure of normal data distributions. The SCD-Tree integrates predictions from the anomaly detection model into its splitting criteria, enhancing the clustering process with the model's insights into anomalies. To further refine these segments, the Gaussian Boundary Delineation (GBD) algorithm is employed to define boundaries within each segmented distribution, effectively delineating normal from anomalous data points. At this point, this approach addresses the curse of dimensionality by segmenting high-dimensional data and ensures resilience to data drift and perturbations through flexible boundary fitting. We transform the intricate operations of anomaly detection into an interpretable rule's format, constructing a comprehensive set of rules for understanding. Our method's evaluation on diverse datasets and models demonstrates superior explanation accuracy, fidelity, and robustness over existing method, proving its efficacy in environments where interpretability is paramount.