Journal of Intelligent Systems and Internet of Things JISIoT 2690-6791 2769-786X 10.54216/JISIoT https://www.americaspg.com/journals/show/3094 2019 2019 Department of Computer Science, College of Science for Women, University of Baghdad, Iraq Yousra Yousra Office of the Vice President for Scientific, University of Baghdad, Iraq Fadhel K. Jabor Office of the Vice President for Scientific, University of Baghdad, Iraq Ghufran A. Omran Department of Computer Science, University of Technology, Iraq Mohammed Hamid Kassem Department of Computer Science, University of Information Technology & Communications, Iraq Raghad Hamid Kassem Department of Computer Science, University of Technology, Iraq Ali Naseer Abood In the evolving landscape of the Internet of Things (IoT), effective intrusion detection is paramount for maintaining security and data integrity. This study introduces a hybrid heuristic technique utilizing artificial intelligence for enhancing intrusion detection systems (IDS) in IoT environments. By integrating various machine learning models, the research focuses on training, tuning, and validating a sequential neural network to predict intrusion occurrences based on extensive data analysis. The methodology involves modelling, which starts with training machine learning algorithms to predict labels from features, tuning the models to meet organizational requirements, and validating them using holdout data. Key machine learning techniques explored include logistic regression, k-nearest neighbors (KNN), naive Bayes, support vector machines (SVM), decision trees, random forests, and neural networks. Each technique's applicability to classification tasks, particularly binary and multivariate scenarios, is discussed in the context of enhancing IDS capabilities. A sequential neural network model, comprising multiple dense and dropout layers, was developed and trained with 148,033 parameters to achieve high accuracy and robustness. The architecture's effectiveness in learning intricate patterns associated with malicious activities while avoiding overfitting is emphasized. The study demonstrates the model's proficiency in binary classification tasks, which is critical for distinguishing between normal and anomalous behaviors in IoT systems. The results indicate that the neural network, optimized using the hybrid heuristic approach, shows a significant reduction in validation loss and a steady improvement in accuracy over multiple epochs. Despite initial overfitting signs, the model maintains high performance on unseen data, underscoring the importance of ongoing model assessment and tuning. 2025 2025 01 15 10.54216/JISIoT.140101 https://www.americaspg.com/articleinfo/18/show/3094