A Hybrid Model for Optimal Defense Strategy Generation

Su Yang, Weiqiang Xie, Chensi Wu, Wenjie Wang, Yuqing Zhang

Abstract: With the development of the attack and defense technology, more and more network objects become the targets of cyber attack. However, these objects have different defense goals because of the different network functions and assets they have. Therefore, the defender needs to develop the optimal defense strategy based on their defense goals. Game theory based methods can help defender to develop the optimal defense strategy. However, there is no recognized effective method for utility calculation within the game theory model. In this paper, we introduced a hybrid model, which applied the analytic hierarchy process(AHP) on utility calculation and applied the attack-defense stochastic game model to develop the optimal defense strategy. Compared with previous methods, our model is more comprehensive and flexible, which is more competent to develop the optimal defense strategy, and through a case study, we demonstrated its effectiveness.