Predicting the impact of disruptions in BMC3 workflow

Measures to safeguard or respond to a cyber attack against a BMC ³ (Battle Management/Command, Control and Communications) system will invariably disrupt the processing flow within that system. We would like to predict the impacts of those disruptions beforehand and select information assurance measures that minimize the disruptions, especially to key BMC³ functions. We present an analysis method based on perturbation analysis. The method approximates the nominal BMC³ workflow processing using a Markov model and computes important sensitivity metrics from optimal control theory, most notably cost-to-go and co-state. Initial computational results are encouraging, and indicate that these perturbation methods can predict how disruptions in BMC³ workflow affect mission effectiveness