Scyld_Scefing writes "In his June 29, 2006 Wired News article, 'It's the Economy, Stupid,' Bruce Schneier covers the content of the 2006 Workshop on the Economics of Information Security. Schneier says that economic ****ysis of IT security issues is relatively new, and links to one of the significant earlier papers from 1991, 'Why Information Security Is Hard -- An Economic Perspective' (.pdf). This article states: 'According to one common view, information security comes down to technical measures. Given better access control policy models, formal proofs of cryptographic protocols, approved firewalls, better ways of detecting intrusions and malicious code, and better tools for system evaluation and assurance, the problems can be solved. In this note, I put forward a contrary view: information insecurity is at least as much due to perverse incentives. Many of the problems can be explained more clearly and convincingly using the language of microeconomics: network externalities, asymmetric information, moral hazard, adverse selection, liability dumping and the tragedy of the commons.'"
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