Information Security Commons^™

Economics Of Information Security Investment In The Case Of Simultaneous Attacks, C. Derrick Huang, Qing Hu, Ravi S. Behara

Qing Hu

With billions of dollars being spent on information security related products and services each year, the economics of information security investment has become an important area of research, with significant implications for management practices. Drawing on recent studies that examine optimal security investment levels under various attack scenarios, we propose an economic model that considers simultaneous attacks from multiple external agents with distinct characteristics, and derive optimal investments based on the principle of benefit maximization. The relationships among the major variables, such as systems vulnerability, security breach probability, potential loss of security breach, and security investment levels, are investigated via …