Nonlinear Resource Allocation in Restoration of Compromised Systems

Under security threats, today's networks are being made to be intrusion tolerant. In a large scale, services are continuing (at a degraded level) while compromising and recovering are both progressing. One of the key problems in the restoration procedure regards to the resource allocation strategies, typically a minimized total cost concerning both service loss and resource expense. In this paper, we investigate the achievable minimal total cost and corresponding resource allocation strategy for different situations. The situations include nonlinear relationship between resource allocation rate and the restoration rate, and its variant when time factor is concerned. We present cost models and numerical results. The results show the impact from various system parameters on the critical conditions for a successful system restoration and the minimal cost. An important result of our study suggests that tight operational region exists under certain conditions.