Blockchain and explainable AI for enhanced decision making in cyber threat detection

Artificial Intelligence (AI) based cyber threat detection tools are widely used to process and analyze a large amount of data for improved intrusion detection performance. However, these models are often considered as black box by the cybersecurity experts due to their inability to comprehend or interpret the reasoning behind the decisions. Moreover, AI-based threat hunting is data-driven and is usually modeled using the data provided by multiple cloud vendors. This is another critical challenge, as a malicious cloud can provide false information (i.e., insider attacks) and can degrade the threat-hunting capability. In this paper, we present a blockchain-enabled eXplainable AI (XAI) for enhancing the decision-making capability of cyber threat detection in the context of Smart Healthcare Systems. Specifically, first, we use blockchain to validate and store data between multiple cloud vendors by implementing a Clique Proof-of-Authority (C-PoA) consensus. Second, a novel deep learning-based threat-hunting model is built by combining Parallel Stacked Long Short Term Memory (PSLSTM) networks with a multi-head attention mechanism for improved attack detection. The extensive experiment confirms its potential to be used as an enhanced decision support system by cybersecurity analysts.