IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/infosf/v8y2006i5d10.1007_s10796-006-9011-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Returns to information security investment: The effect of alternative information security breach functions on optimal investment and sensitivity to vulnerability

Author

Listed:
  • Kjell Hausken

    (University of Stavanger)

Abstract

Four kinds of marginal returns to security investment to protect an information set are decrease, first increase and then decrease (logistic function), increase, and constancy. Gordon, L. A. and Loeb, M. (ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. Secur., 5:438–457, 2002). find for decreasing marginal returns that a firm invests maximum 37% (1 / e) of the expected loss from a security breach, and that protecting moderately rather than extremely vulnerable information sets may be optimal. This article presents classes of all four kinds where the optimal investment is no longer capped at 1 / e. First, investment in information security activities for the logistic function is zero for low vulnerabilities, jumps in a limited “bang-bang” manner to a positive level for intermediate vulnerabilities, and thereafter increases concavely in absolute terms. Second, we present an alternative class with decreasing marginal returns where the investment increases convexly in the vulnerability until a bound is reached, investing most heavily to protect the extremely vulnerable information sets. For the third and fourth kinds the optimal investment is of an all-out “bang-bang” nature, that is, zero for low vulnerabilities, and jumping to maximum investment for intermediate vulnerabilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Kjell Hausken, 2006. "Returns to information security investment: The effect of alternative information security breach functions on optimal investment and sensitivity to vulnerability," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 8(5), pages 338-349, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:infosf:v:8:y:2006:i:5:d:10.1007_s10796-006-9011-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10796-006-9011-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10796-006-9011-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10796-006-9011-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hausken, Kjell & Plumper, Thomas, 2002. "Containing Contagious Financial Crises: The Political Economy of Joint Intervention into the Asian Crisis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 111(3-4), pages 209-236, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robin Pope & Reinhard Selten & Johannes Kaiser & Sebastian Kube & Jürgen Hagen, 2012. "Exchange rate determination: a theory of the decisive role of central bank cooperation and conflict," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 13-51, March.
    2. Jiang, Hai & Tang, Shenfeng & Li, Lifang & Xu, Fangming & Di, Qian, 2022. "Re-examining the Contagion Channels of Global Financial Crises: Evidence from the Twelve Years since the US Subprime Crisis," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    3. Thomas Plümper & Vera E. Troeger, 2006. "Fear of Floating and the External Effects of Currency Unions," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp181, IIIS.
    4. Hausken, Kjell & Plümper, Thomas & Schneider, Gerald, 2002. "The Trilemma of the Protectionist Autocrat: An Assessment of the Political Determinants of Foreign Economic Liberalization," MPRA Paper 75866, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Sorin BURNETE, 2009. "Emerging Economies Faced With The Downside Of Financial Globalization: Hedges And Way Outs," Review of Economic and Business Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, issue 3, pages 41-55, May.
    6. Welburn, Jonathan W. & Hausken, Kjell, 2015. "A game theoretic model of economic crises," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 266(C), pages 738-762.
    7. Hausken, Kjell & Mattli, Walter & Plümper, Thomas, 2006. "Widening versus Deepening of International Unions," MPRA Paper 75882, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Welburn, Jonathan William & Hausken, Kjell, 2015. "A Game-Theoretic Model with Empirics of Economic Crises," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2015/7, University of Stavanger.
    9. Coyne, Christopher J., 2011. "Constitutions and crisis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 351-357.
    10. Welburn, Jonathan & Hausken, Kjell, 2014. "Game-Theoretic Perspectives on Financial Crises," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2014/22, University of Stavanger.
    11. Jonathan W. Welburn, 2020. "Crises Beyond Belief: Findings on Contagion, the Role of Beliefs, and the Eurozone Debt Crisis from a Borrower–Lender Game," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 56(2), pages 263-317, August.
    12. Pope, Robin & Selten, Reinhard & Kube, Sebastian & von Hagen, Jürgen, 2009. "Managed Floats to Damp Shocks like 1982-5 and 2006-9: Field and Laboratory Evidence for Chinese Interest in a Single World Currency," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 26/2009, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    13. Pope, Robin & Selten, Reinhard & Kube, Sebastian & von Hagen, Jürgen, 2009. "Prominent Numbers, Indices and Ratios in Exchange Rate Determination and Financial Crashes: in Economists’ Models, in the Field and in the Laboratory," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 18/2009, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    14. Troeger, Vera, 2012. "Monetary Policy Flixibility in floating Exchange Rate Regimes: Currency Denomination and Import Shares," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 82, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    15. Pope, Robin & Selten, Reinhard & Kaiser, Johannes & Kube, Sebastian & von Hagen, Jürgen, 2007. "The damage from clean floats: From an anti-inflationary monetary policy," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 19/2007, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    16. Jonathan William Welburn & Kjell Hausken, 2017. "Game Theoretic Modeling of Economic Systems and the European Debt Crisis," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 49(2), pages 177-226, February.
    17. Anubha Goel & Aparna Mehra, 2019. "Analyzing Contagion Effect in Markets During Financial Crisis Using Stochastic Autoregressive Canonical Vine Model," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 53(3), pages 921-950, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:infosf:v:8:y:2006:i:5:d:10.1007_s10796-006-9011-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.