Productivity Space of Information Security in an Extension of the Gordon-Loeb’s InvestmentModel

Abstract

Information security engineers provide some countermeasures so that attacks will fail. This is vulnerabilityreduction. In addition, they provide other countermeasures so that attacks will not occur. This is threat reduction. In order to study how the optimal investment for information security is influenced by these reductions, this chapter introduces a productivity space of information security. In the same manner as in the Gordon-Loeb model, where vulnerability reduction is only considered, I suppose a productivity of information security characterizes economic effects of information security investment. In particular, I consider a productivity regarding threat reduction as well as a productivity regarding vulnerability reduction, and investigate a two-dimensional space formed by the two productivities. The investigation shows that the productivity space is divided into three areas: the no-investment area where both the productivities are low, the mid-vulnerability intensive area where the vulnerability reduction productivity is high but the threat reduction productivity is low, and the high-vulnerability intensive area where the threat reduction productivity is high.