Mitigation of Malicious Attacks on Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel, cost-effective method to enhance the robustness of various networks against malicious attacks, demonstrated on real-world infrastructure and complex network models.

Contribution

It introduces a new robustness measure and an efficient restructuring method to significantly improve network resilience with minimal cost.

Findings

Small structural changes greatly increase network robustness

Method is effective on electricity, Internet, and complex network models

Robustness improvements do not compromise network functionality

Abstract

Terrorist attacks on transportation networks have traumatized modern societies. With a single blast, it has become possible to paralyze airline traffic, electric power supply, ground transportation or Internet communication. How and at which cost can one restructure the network such that it will become more robust against a malicious attack? We introduce a unique measure for robustness and use it to devise a method to mitigate economically and efficiently this risk. We demonstrate its efficiency on the European electricity system and on the Internet as well as on complex networks models. We show that with small changes in the network structure (low cost) the robustness of diverse networks can be improved dramatically while their functionality remains unchanged. Our results are useful not only for improving significantly with low cost the robustness of existing infrastructures but also for designing economically robust network systems.