The seminar explores the nascent and growing field of the economics of
privacy and security. Many security failures have economic causes.
Systems are vulnerable when their defenders do not have sufficient
incentives to invest in security technologies, for example, because they
do not suffer the full consequences of their actions. At the same time,
users’ personal and financial information has played a critical role in
the monetization of attacks. But personal information has also become a
commercial good for legitimate companies. Data is collected for
countless purposes. Targeted advertisements, personalization, price
discrimination as well as the creation and sale of background reports
are enabled by the automated wholesale accumulation of users’ trail
online and offline. In this seminar, we will investigate the economic
incentives for security attacks and appropriate security defenses. A
further objective is a better understanding of the current and future
marketplace for personal information and the behavioral foundations of
user privacy. We will discuss methods from the economic and behavioral
sciences to contribute to a rigorous comprehension of the challenges and
solution approaches for current privacy and security challenges.
- Dozent: Jens Großklags