Speaker: Benjamin Johnson, Carnegie Mellon University

Title: Are Security Experts Useful? Bayesian Nash Equilibria for
Network Security Games with Limited Information

Abstract: A common assumption in security research is that more
individual expertise unambiguously leads to a more secure overall
network. We present a game-theoretic model in which this common
assumption is challenged. Our findings indicate that expert users can
be not only invaluable contributors, but also free-riders, defectors,
and narcissistic opportunists. A direct application is that user
education needs to highlight the cooperative nature of security, and
foster the community sense, in particular, of higher skilled computer
users.  As a technical contribution, this paper represents, to our
knowledge, the first formal study to quantitatively assess the impact
of different degrees of information security expertise on the overall
security of a network.

Bio: Benjamin Johnson is a postdoctoral researcher at CyLab, Carnegie
Mellon University. His research interests include economics of
information security, game theory of networked systems, and complexity
theory.  Benjamin holds a Ph.D. in Logic and the Methodology of
Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and a
M.S. degree in mathematics from Virginia Tech University. In his spare
time he enjoys gymnastics, kitesurfing, and snowboarding.