Workshop on Economics and Information Security

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/econws.html




Workshop on Economics and Information Security

University of California, Berkeley

May 16-17, 2002


Do we spend enough on keeping `hackers' out of our computer systems? Do we
not spend enough? Or do we spend too much?

Many system security failures occur not so much for technical reasons but
because of failures of organisation and motivation. For example, the person
or company best placed to protect a system may be insufficiently motivated
to do so, because the costs of system failure fall on others. Such perverse
incentives raise many issues best discussed using economic concepts such as
externalities, asymmetric information, adverse selection and moral hazard.
They are becoming increasingly important now that information security
mechanisms are not merely used to protect against malicious attacks, but
also to protect monopolies, differentiate products and segment markets.
There are also interesting security issues raised by industry
monopolization and the accompanying reduction in product heterogenity. For
these and other reasons, the confluence between information security and
economics is of growing importance.

We are organising the first workshop on the topic, to be held in the School
of Information Management and Systems at the University of California,
Berkeley, on the 16th and 17th May 2002. In order to keep the event
informal and interactive, attendance will be limited to about 30-35
participants. If you would like to participate, please send us a position
paper (of 1-2 pages) by the 31st March 2002.

We welcome interest not just from economists and information security
professionals, but from people with relevant experience, such as in the
insurance industry, corporate risk management, or law enforcement agencies.

Program committee:

*	Hal Varian (program co-chair)
*	Ross Anderson	(program co-chair)
*	Doug Tygar (general chair)
*	Jean Camp
*	Li Gong
*	Larry Gordon
*	Marty Loeb
*	Andrew Odlyzko
*	Bruce Schneier

Position papers and expressions of interest should be sent to either
co-chair - Hal Varian hal at sims.berkeley.edu or Ross Anderson
ross.anderson at cl.cam.ac.uk


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'



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