Evolution of Network Robustness for Given Defenses Resource Allocation Strategies

Abstract

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the effective and efficient protection of critical information infrastructures has become an even more important issue. To enhance network survivability, a network operator needs to invest a fixed amount of budget and distribute it properly. However, a potential attacker will always adjust his attack strategies to compromise a network at minimal cost, if he knows the resource allocation strategy of the network operator. In this paper, we first evaluate the survivability of a given network under two different metrics; that is, we assess the minimal attack cost incurred by an attacker. The two survivability metrics are assumed to be the connectivity of at least one given critical OriginDestination pair (OD pair) and that of all given critical OD pairs. We then analyze the problem with two optimization-based models, in which the problem structure is, by nature, a mixed integer programming problem.