Cyber Epidemics: Modeling Attacker-Defender Dynamics in Critical Infrastructure Systems

Abstract

Cyber warfare presents a major potential threat to critical infrastructures (CIs). Decision makers who want to develop resilient CIs must consider both strategic and operational aspects of CIs as well as nonlinear dynamics characterizing such cyber-physical systems. This paper combines System Dynamics (SD) with a game-theoretic approach to understand cyber epidemics dynamics of CI operations triggered by attacker and defender strategic interactions. We model attack-defense dynamics as a continuous game of timing to highlight that effectiveness of strategic moves strongly depends on when to act. We simulate scenarios of proactive and reactive defenses to demonstrate how our model supports cyber security policy optimization. This research builds on our previous work by extending a novel block building modeling framework for disruption impact analysis in networked CIs.