PN-BBN: A Petri Net-Based Bayesian Network for Anomalous Behavior Detection

Abstract

Business process anomalous behavior detection reveals unexpected cases from event logs to ensure the trusted operation of information systems. Anomaly behavior is mainly identified through a log-to-model alignment analysis or numerical outlier detection. However, both approaches ignore the influence of probability distributions or activity relationships in process activities. Based on this concern, this paper incorporates the behavioral relationships characterized by the process model and the joint probability distribution of nodes related to suspected anomalous behaviors. Moreover, a Petri Net-Based Bayesian Network (PN-BBN) is proposed to detect anomalous behaviors based on the probabilistic inference of behavioral contexts. First, the process model is filtered based on the process structure of the process activities to identify the key regions where the suspected anomalous behaviors are located. Then, the behavioral profile of the activity is used to prune it to position the ineluctable paths that trigger these activities. Further, the model is used as the architecture for parameter learning to construct the PN-BBN. Based on this, anomaly scores are inferred based on the joint probabilities of activities related to suspected anomalous behaviors for anomaly detection under the constraints of control flow and probability distributions. Finally, PN-BBN is implemented based on the open-source frameworks PM4PY and PMGPY and evaluated from multiple metrics with synthetic and real process data. The experimental results demonstrate that PN-BBN effectively identifies anomalous process behaviors and improves the reliability of information systems.