Trade-off between Being Attacked and Being Protected

Inside a computer network, virus brings damage and cost money. On the other hand, anti-virus software brings protection and cost money as well. The trade-off between being attacked by virus and paying money to get protection is of interest to study. To study this, we present a model to simulate the decision-making process of each computer user within a network of computers. Similar models that simulate virus or information spreading across human networks are out there for years. But our model has one novel difference. Instead of using fixed random network structure to build the simulation network, our model take network structure as one of the factors that may affect users´ decision-making process.