On modeling the crowding and psychological effects in network-virus prevalence with nonlinear epidemic model

Abstract

The fast point-to-group information sharing process within an enterprise network also exposes information to more severe virus attacks. On the other hand, a relative large number of virus attacks may result in psychological effects of inhibition for the network end-users. In this paper, a nonlinear force of infection function for e-SEIR model is presented to study the crowding and psychological effects in network virus prevalence. By carrying out a global analysis of the stability of both the virus-free and endemic equilibrium, this work reveals how the crowding and psychological effects have impacts on network virus propagation process. Furthermore, analysis and simulation results show some managerial insights that are helpful for the practice of antivirus in information sharing networks.