Risk mitigation strategies for critical infrastructures based on graph centrality analysis

Abstract

Dependency risk graphs have been proposed as a tool for analyzing cascading failures due to critical infrastructure dependency chains. However, dependency chain analysis is not by itself adequate to develop an efficient risk mitigation strategy – one that specifies which critical infrastructures should have high priority for applying mitigation controls in order to achieve an optimal reduction in the overall risk. This paper extends previous dependency risk analysis research to implement efficient risk mitigation. This is accomplished by exploring the relation between dependency risk paths and graph centrality characteristics. Graph centrality metrics are applied to design and evaluate the effectiveness of alternative risk mitigation strategies. The experimental evaluations are based on random graphs that simulate common critical infrastructure dependency characteristics as identified by recent empirical studies. The experimental results are used to specify an algorithm that prioritizes critical infrastructure nodes for applying controls in order to achieve efficient risk mitigation.