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3.2.1- Viral Influx

Let us consider the relationship between world-wide virus prevalence and the number of virus incidents observed in a large sample population as a function of time.

If the number of machines in the organization and the permeability of the organizational boundary remain constant, the number of incidents per unit time I(t) is proportional to the number of infected machines in the world (at least the part of the world with which the organization comes in contact). However, all that a central reporting agency can record is tex2html_wrap_inline1070 , the number of incidents observed per unit time.

If the tex2html_wrap_inline1072 and tex2html_wrap_inline1074 are reasonably constant with time, the observed incident rate tex2html_wrap_inline1076 is related to the actual incident rate I(t) via

 

equation162

where Q(t) is the probability density for the incident duration to be t. To a rough approximation, tex2html_wrap_inline1084 , where Q is the average incident duration. In other words, tex2html_wrap_inline1088 is approximately a time-delayed version of I(t).

The assumption of constant tex2html_wrap_inline1092 and tex2html_wrap_inline1094 usually holds, but was violated severely during the period of Michelangelo Madness, as we shall show in Section 4. In the future, more sophisticated theories may in fact allow us to estimate Q from incident statistics taken in the months surrounding March 6, 1992, the much-publicized trigger date of the Michelangelo virus.


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