This research paper examined the security threat issues against agents/multi-agent based system platform by malicious agent attackers in a network environment. Several techniques like fault isolation or sandboxing, access control to host resources, digital signatures, strong authentication, proof carrying code and message encryption were suggested by different research scholars as a means of mitigating the menace but however, no strong evidence on their application / implementation were mentioned. This research work used a 2 Factor or Double Data Encryption Standard (DES) approach to encrypt / decrypt messages between agents in our proposed network monitoring platform to prevent malicious agent from hijacking the exact network data content during communication. Java programming language was used to implement the 2DES algorithm in the security mechanism proposed. The system was tested for its effectiveness and efficiency in both non-production and production network environment. Results revealed detection rate to be high and with a very minimal false alarm rate. The proposed system is highly recommended for usage in any local area network environment.
Keywords: 2DES Algorithm, Agents, Java, LAN, Security
