An Epidemic Patch-Enabled Delayed Model for Virus Propagation: Towards Evaluating Bifurcation and White Noise

The massive disruptions caused by malware, such as a virus in computer networks and other aspects of information and communication technology, have generated attention, making it a hot research topic. While antivirus and firewalls can be effective, there is also a need to understand the spread patterns of viral infection using epidemic models to curb its incidences. Many previous research attempts have produced analytical models for computer viruses under various infectiousness situations. As a result, we suggested the SLBS model, which considers infection latency and transient immunity in patched nodes. Under certain conditions, the local stability of all equilibrium points is investigated. By setting the delay parameter, we established the occurrence of a Hopf bifurcation (HB) as it crossed a crucial point by several analyses. We also used the centre manifold theorem and normal form theory to examine the attributes of the HB. While the former was used to study the time delay and direction of Hopf bifurcation, the latter was used to investigate external noise and its intensities. Finally, numerical simulations two dimensional and three-dimensional graphs were used to depict the perturbations of the model, thus bolstering the essentiality of the study.