TITLE:
Next-Generation Cyber Defense: AI-Powered Predictive Analytics for National Security and Threat Resilience
AUTHORS:
Nonye Peter Awurum
KEYWORDS:
Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Predictive Analytics, National Security, Threat Resilience, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Anomaly Detection, Convolutional Neural Networks, Gradient Boosting, Threat Intelligence
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.12 No.11,
November
7,
2025
ABSTRACT: The accelerating sophistication of cyberattacks poses unprecedented challenges for national security, critical infrastructures, and global digital resilience. Traditional signature-based defenses have become insufficient against advanced persistent threats (APTs), ransomware, zero-day exploits, and polymorphic malware. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered predictive analytics offers transformative capabilities by enabling proactive detection, anomaly identification, and automated mitigation of cyber threats. This paper investigates the application of AI-driven models—including convolutional neural networks (CNNs), Random Forest (RF), and Gradient Boosting Machines (GBMs)—to enhance predictive cyber defense within national security frameworks. Leveraging large-scale datasets, such as CICIDS-2017 and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), we evaluate these models across key metrics: accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (ROC-AUC). Our findings indicate that CNNs achieve superior recall (96.2%) and ROC-AUC (0.982), making them well-suited for environments prioritizing maximum detection, while GBMs demonstrate balanced precision and recall, offering robustness in high-stakes critical infrastructure defense. Beyond technical contributions, this study situates AI-powered cybersecurity within broader national resilience strategies, emphasizing ethical considerations, explainable AI (XAI), and policy integration. By providing an empirically grounded analysis, the research demonstrates how predictive AI can shift cybersecurity paradigms from reactive to proactive, advancing both national resilience and global cyber defense strategies.