An Economic Approach to Security

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Description

Internet security is universally seen as an extremely important problem. Moreover, technical solutions developed over the last three decades represent deep and elegant intellectual contributions. Yet few of these solutions are in widespread use. Clearly something is amiss. It has recently been argued, by Anderson and others, that the missing link is economics: Only through understanding the incentives inherent in various security proposals can one decide which, if any, would actually lead to greater security. This research project is a three-year, multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary investigation of the economics of security in networked environments. Specific research topics include security of interdomain routing, adoptability of trusted platforms, and markets for private information. The intellectual merit and broader impact of the project are intertwined, both based on the potential not only to solve technical problems but also to develop general analytical techniques for evaluating candidate solutions to real security problems in a manner that gives adoption incentives their just due. If successful, it will lead to greater actual security, rather than simply to more available security technology.

This project is supported by NSF grant CNS-0428422 (Sep 1, 2004 - Aug 31, 2008).

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Contact: feigenbaum AT cs DOT yale DOT edu