An agent-based model to simulate coordinated response to malware outbreak within an organisation

Malware is a major threat to organisations. It affects business continuity and induces risks to organisations. Current anti-malware solutions are challenged to keep the risks at bay. When a malware manages to penetrate an organisation's defences, there is a need to quickly contain the malware and to keep control over the organisation's IT assets before the risk escalates. In such incident, incident responders need to effectively carry out their containment plan. An ineffective containment plan will induce greater risks. Such infiltration can spread like a biological epidemic outbreak. These epidemic-like outbreaks can be modelled using mathematical models. However there are no models to assess the effectiveness of incident response plan. Additionally, there are many variable considerations that the incident response plan would need to factor in. This research paper proposes the use of an agent-based model to model containment response plan to minimise the impact of a malware outbreak.