Communications of the ACM
A Futures Market For Computer Security
Image courtesy of Technology Review
A pilot prediction market that can forecast major information security incidents before they occur is under development by information security researchers from academia, industry, and the U.S. intelligence community for the purpose of supplying actionable data, says Greg Shannon with Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute.
"If you're Verizon, and you're trying to pre-position resources, you might want to have some visibility over the horizon about the projected prevalence of mobile malware," he says. "That's something they'd like to have an informed opinion about by leveraging the wisdom of the security community."
Consensus Point CEO Linda Rebrovick says the project's objective is to draw a network of approximately 250 experts. Prediction markets have a substantial inherent bias--respondents to questions are not surveyed randomly—but there also is an incentive for respondents to respond only to those queries they feel confident in answering accurately. "People tend to speak up only when they're reasonably sure they know the answer," says Consensus Point chief scientist Robin Hanson.
Even lukewarm responses to questions can be useful, notes Dan Geer, chief information security officer at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's In-Q-Tel venture capital branch.
From Technology Review
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2011 Information Inc. 
, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found