Vulnerability based robust protection strategy selection in service networks

The disruption of critical infrastructures is currently a major security concern. Preparedness in the context of critical infrastructures can be understood as a state of readiness that translates to the development of a plan to support, maintain or restore infrastructure services in cases of critical disruption. From the perspective of this manuscript, infrastructure preparedness plans are then strongly related to the types of disruptions within the infrastructure. This paper presents an attacker and defender contest in the context of service network as a first step to address the adequate protection of infrastructures against external failure causing events and to integrate the research areas of: vulnerability analysis and protection strategy development. The paper introduces a robust protection analysis approach that ties together vulnerability analysis with protection strategy development with purpose of providing infrastructure protection strategies to reduce points of vulnerability. The contest considered generates two multi-objective models that are solved via an evolutionary algorithm. The solutions to each of these problems allow the defender to identify key network elements that allow the attacker to affect the most damage in a network service and then, based on this information, developing a set of cost effective robust protection strategies. The techniques and approaches developed are illustrated in an electric power system context.