# An Attention-Based Deep Generative Model for Anomaly Detection in Industrial Control Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05277 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05277/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [SqueezeNet: AlexNet-level accuracy with 50x fewer parameters and <0.5MB model size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07360/) (2016)
- [TensorFlow: Large-Scale Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Distributed Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04467/) (2016)
- [Gate-Variants of Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.05923/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Anomaly Detection via Variational Auto-Encoder for Seasonal KPIs in Web Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03903/) (2018)
- [LSTM-based Encoder-Decoder for Multi-sensor Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00148/) (2016)
- [A Multimodal Anomaly Detector for Robot-Assisted Feeding Using an LSTM-based Variational Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00614/) (2017)
- [3D Fully Convolutional Network for Vehicle Detection in Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08069/) (2016)
- [Detecting Cyberattacks in Industrial Control Systems Using Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08110/) (2018)
- [Anomaly Detection for a Water Treatment System Using Unsupervised Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.05342/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Anomaly detection is critical for the secure and reliable operation of industrial control systems. As our reliance on such complex cyber-physical systems grows, it becomes paramount to have automated methods for detecting anomalies, preventing attacks, and responding intelligently. {This paper presents a novel deep generative model to meet this need. The proposed model follows a variational autoencoder architecture with a convolutional encoder and decoder to extract features from both spatial and temporal dimensions. Additionally, we incorporate an attention mechanism that directs focus towards specific regions, enhancing the representation of relevant features and improving anomaly detection accuracy. We also employ a dynamic threshold approach leveraging the reconstruction probability and make our source code publicly available to promote reproducibility and facilitate further research. Comprehensive experimental analysis is conducted on data from all six stages of the Secure Water Treatment (SWaT) testbed, and the experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our approach compared to several state-of-the-art baseline techniques.