The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Defining an optimal protection strategy against viruses, spam propagation or any other kind of contamination process is an important feature for designing new networks and architectures. In this work, we consider decentralized optimal protection strategies when a virus is propagating over a network through a SIS epidemic process. We assume that each node in the network can fully protect itself from infection at a constant cost, or the node can use recovery software, once it is infected. We model our system using a congestion game theoretic framework (due to Rosenthal) and find pure, mixed equilibria, and the Price of Anarchy (PoA) in several network topologies. We finally propose extensions of both the SIS propagation model as well as of the protection strategies and evaluate their performance. This work was done within the CONGAS European project on games in complex systems with the authors Stojan Trajanovski, Yezekael Hayel, Huijuan Wang and Piet Van Mieghem.

Bio:
Eitan Altman received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering (1984), the B.A. degree in physics (1984) and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering (1990), all from the Technion-Israel Institute, Haifa. In (1990) he further received his B.Mus. degree in music composition in Tel-Aviv university. Since 1990, Dr. Altman has been a researcher at INRIA (National research institute in computer science and control) in Sophia-Antipolis, France. He has been in the editorial boards of several scientific journals: Wireless Networks (WINET), Computer Networks (COMNET), Computer Communications (Comcom), J. Discrete Event Dynamic Systems (JDEDS), SIAM J. of Control and Optimisation (SICON), Stochastic Models, and Journal of Economy Dynamic and Control (JEDC). He received the best paper award in the Networking 2006, in Globecom 2007, in IFIP Wireless Days 2009 and in CNSM 2011 (Paris) conferences. His areas of interest include Network Engineering Games, social networks and their control and the analysis through game theoretical models of network neutrality issues. He received in 2012 the Grand Prix de France Telecom from the French Academy of Sciences. On July 2014 he received the ISAACS Award from the Society of Dynamic Games for his contribution in game Theory.