The fast growth of edge–cloud computing infrastructures has increased the cybersecurity burden even as it has substantially amplified the energy use and carbon footprint of intrusion detection systems (IDSs). In order to overcome this challenge, this paper suggests GreenShield, which is a framework of low-carbon cybersecurity involving lightweight cryptography, deep learning that is energy efficient, and carbon conscious system optimization across distributed edges and in cloud setup. GreenShield employs a hierarchical federated learning architecture with integrated knowledge distillation and a carbon-aware scheduling controller that dynamically adjusts security response execution based on threat intensity and renewable energy availability. As extensive experiments on the UNSW-NB15 and CIC-IDS2017 datasets show, GreenShield attains 98.73% detection accuracy and is 67.4% more energy efficient than traditional deeplearning-based IDSs. Further, the suggested system reduces the operational carbon emissions up to 97.6%, which is equivalent to a reduction of around 2.8 kg CO2-equivalent/per hour in a typical edge-deployment situation, yet it does not undermine the performance of the detection. These findings suggest that GreenShield can be one of the meaningful alternatives in providing viable and scalable sustainable cybersecurity that supports carbon-conscious security workflows in the future edge–cloud computing architecture.
Abdullah Alshammari (Wed,) studied this question.