IoT Network Security Correlation for Prioritized Alerts

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Solution Overview

Problem

The overwhelming amount of security alerts generated by IoT devices due to their large scale and vulnerabilities overwhelms traditional security systems, making it difficult for administrators to prioritize and manage security threats effectively.

Innovation Solution

A correlation-based network security system that utilizes a correlation monitor service to map and analyze telemetry data from IoT devices, identifying correlations and deviant behavior to generate prioritized alerts, thereby filtering out noise and focusing on actual security threats.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If traditional security systems monitor all IoT devices individually, then comprehensive security coverage is achieved, but the overwhelming amount of security alerts generated makes it difficult for administrators to prioritize and manage threats effectively

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvesecurity coverageVSAvoidalert management complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent merges individual device security monitoring into a centralized correlation service that aggregates telemetry data from multiple devices. This correlation service combines alert information across devices, identifying patterns and relationships that individual monitoring would miss, thereby maintaining comprehensive security coverage while reducing the complexity of alert management through unified analysis.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #5Merging (Combining)

Solution Approach 2:

The correlation service acts as an intermediary layer between raw security alerts and administrators. It receives telemetry data from multiple devices, processes and correlates the information, then presents prioritized, contextualized alerts to administrators. This intermediary function filters and organizes the overwhelming amount of raw alerts into manageable, actionable intelligence.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Loss of information

If correlation monitoring is implemented across all network devices, then noise in security alerts is reduced and genuine threats are identified more effectively, but the computational resources and processing time required increase significantly

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvesignal-to-noise ratio in alertsVSAvoidcomputational processing resources
Core Design Contradiction:
Loss of informationVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The correlation service performs preliminary correlation analysis on telemetry data before generating security alerts. By pre-processing and correlating device behaviors in advance, the system identifies patterns and relationships that indicate potential threats, reducing the need for intensive real-time analysis when alerts are generated and lowering overall computational burden.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system applies correlation monitoring selectively to devices and alert types that show promise of genuine threats, rather than uniformly across all devices. The correlation service focuses computational resources on high-value correlations and devices with anomalous patterns, performing partial monitoring where full correlation would be excessive but still effective.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #16Partial or excessive action

Data Source

PatentEP4088437B1Correlation-based network security
Publication Date: 2025.09.10 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC
  • EP4088437B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP4088437B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP4088437B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

A correlation-based network security for network devices is disclosed. Correlations between a plurality of network devices are mapped based on telemetry from the network devices to determine correlated devices. The behaviors of the correlated devices are monitored based on telemetry received from the correlated devices to determine a deviant device of the plurality of devices. A prioritized alert for the plurality of network devices is generated from a security alert received for the deviant device.