Network defensive strategy definition based on node criticality

In this paper we develop a novel approach to identify the best policy to allocate protection resources to raise the overall network robustness to node disruption. The proposed methodology is based on the identification of the most critical elements of the network in terms of their connectivity contribution to the entire system. The definition of the critical nodes is performed as a game-theoretic analysis based on Shapley Value theory. We validate the proposed approach with respect to a case study featuring a social network; by comparison with state of the art metrics, we experimentally show that the proposed protection strategy is particularly effective in preserving the residual network connectivity.