Economic Prospect Theory Applied to Cybersecurity

Abstract

A growing concern in the cybersecurity community evaluation of the strengths and defenses regarding cyberattacks. One approach that has not been often explored is to estimate the strength of an attack or defense in economic terms. For example, estimation of the memory required for code used for an attack, or what is equivalent, the computer time to execute an attack. We choose to express the costs in economic terms, and thus define the method of analyzing an important line of research known as “behavioral economics”, pioneered by Kahneman and Tversky, and translated into cybersecurity terms. In this way we attempt to determine a cybersecurity analog for well-known results in economic prospect theory to be able to estimate the costs of cyberattacks and defenses.