Patent ID: 8862454

Claim:
An apparatus to execute a distributed business process simulation of a competitive market environment, the apparatus comprising: a simulation server; a plurality of client devices communicatively coupled to the simulation server, each client device in the plurality of client devices providing different inputs and different outputs associated with different portions of the business process simulation of the competitive market environment, wherein at least one input from a first client device in the plurality of client devices has an indirect influence on at least one output of a second different client device in the plurality of client devices; and a software program executing on the simulation server, the software program causing the simulation server to: receive a user input from the first client device indicative of a risk tolerance level; transmit a set of available response actions based on the selected risk tolerance level; receive a selected response action from the first client device, the selected response action being selected from the set of available response actions; determine an operational cost imposed on an adversary based on the selected response action, the operational cost having an effect of one of (a) deterring the adversary from causing a disruption to a simulated competitive market environment, and (b) not deterring the adversary from causing the disruption to the simulated competitive market environment.