DETECTING CHANGES TO WEB PAGE CHARACTERISTICS USING MACHINE LEARNING

A computer implemented method to detect an anomalous change to a web application, the web application executing with a web server, the method including receiving a first set of records for the web application operating in a training mode of operation, each record including characteristics of a content of a web page for the web application; generating a sparse distributed representation of the set of records to form a training set for a hierarchical temporal memory (HTM); training the HTM based on the training set in order that the trained HTM provides a model of the operation of the web application in the training mode of operation; receiving a second set of records for the web application, each record including characteristics of content of the web page; generating a sparse distributed representation of the second set of records to form an input set for the trained HTM; executing the trained HTM based on the input set to determine a degree of recognition of the records of the input set; and responsive to a determination that a degree of recognition of one or more records of the input set is below a threshold degree, identifying an anomalous change to the web page.