Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology and Management
ISSN (Online): 3049-3684
Volume: 1 Issue: 1 | Open Access | 09 April 2025
Explainable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Cyber Defense Systems
Sreelatha Madhuri, Student, Sarvajanik College of Engineering & Technology
Abstract
Autonomous cyber defense systems are increasingly required to respond to sophisticated and rapidly evolving cyber threats. Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has emerged as a promising approach for dynamic threat mitigation due to its ability to learn optimal defense policies through interaction with complex environments. However, the black-box nature of DRL models limits their adoption in high-stakes cybersecurity applications where interpretability, trust, and accountability are essential. This paper proposes an Explainable Deep Reinforcement Learning (XDRL) framework designed specifically for autonomous cyber defense systems. The framework integrates a Deep Q-Network (DQN) with a post-hoc explanation module combining SHAP-based feature attribution and policy summarization through decision-tree distillation. Experimental evaluation in a simulated enterprise network environment demonstrates that the proposed model achieves a 23% higher threat mitigation rate compared to baseline rule-based systems while providing human-interpretable explanations for over 92% of defense actions. The results indicate that explainability can be integrated into DRL-based cyber defense without significantly degrading performance.
Keywords
Deep Reinforcement Learning, Explainable AI, Cybersecurity, Autonomous Defense Systems, DQN, Intrusion Response
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