Optimal decentralized security software deployment in multihop wireless networks

Decentralized security software deployment is important to achieve reliable and secure network operations. In this paper, we consider the joint traffic routing and security software deployment problem. In this problem, the network can make decisions about routing, security protection and recovery software to minimize total energy consumption of all nodes in the network. Specifically, the network has to trade off between energy consumption and preventing security damages by running protection software based on uncertainty about attacks. The protection software has to be deployed along the route of traffic flow, and hence the network has to optimize traffic routing. We first formulate this problem as a stochastic programming model. To obtain the solution, we transform the stochastic programming model into the deterministic problem, which can be solved using a standard solver. The performance evaluation reveals that the optimal solution depends largely on energy budget and energy consumption of the nodes for transferring traffic and running security software.