Towards controlling virus propagation in information systems with point-to-group information sharing

Nowadays, for information systems at organizational and interorganizational levels, information sharing is essential for business operations and strategic decision-making. As a mixed blessing, however, the information sharing process also exposes information systems to more severe virus attacks. In light of this, research efforts on virus propagation and virus control have drawn increasing interests in both the academic and industrial domains. This paper thus presents a virus propagation model, namely E-SEIR, to gain insights of virus propagation in networks with Point-to-Group (P2G) information sharing patterns. Unlike most existing virus propagation models, E-SEIR has three important characteristics. First, an additional exposed state is integrated into the model to describe the latent period of computer viruses. Second, a P2G infection function is introduced to the model to characterize the real-world networks, which consist of many information-sharing sub-networks. Third, E-SEIR takes various antivirus countermeasures into consideration, which provides unique opportunities for studying the behaviors of virus propagation with the presence of antivirus activities. Based on this E-SEIR model, we have studied the possibility of short-term virus outbreaks and long-term network survivability, and the results revealed some key managerial insights that are helpful for the practice of virus propagation control in information sharing networks.