Design Through Failure: A Network Perspective

Sociotechnical systems are central in the way our modern society is structured. Thus, understanding their global reaction to local failures is of great importance. Within the context of cyber-security, a worst case scenario of random and targeted attacks is numerically simulated in order to evaluate the resilience of three distinct system architectures. Of special interest is the capacity to provide early -warning signs and the trade-off between resilience and efficiency, in terms of the underlying architecture. The paper concludes with design implications based on the evidence presented.