Title: “Security Incentives of Intermediaries: Preliminary Empirical Findings from Different Markets."

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Michel van Eeten (TU Delft)

Abstract:

Information security is increasingly in the hands of powerful intermediaries, such as Internet service providers, hosting providers, registrars, payment providers, certification authorities, search engines, and cloud service providers. There are few reliable metrics about the security performance of these intermediaries. This information asymmetry is a classic cause of market failure, undermining the incentives to invest in security. In the seminar, we will present preliminary empirical research in our team to increase our insights into the security performance and incentives in the markets for ISPs, registrars and financial services. Much work remains to to be done, but these are the first steps to overcome the information asymmetry in these markets and to improve the incentives of the firms on which we increasingly rely for our security.

Short bio:

Michel van Eeten is a professor at Delft University of Technology. His chair focuses on the Governance of Cybersecurity. He studies the interplay between technological design and economic incentives in Internet security. His team analyses large-scale Internet measurement and incident data to identify how the markets for Internet services deal with security risks. He is also a member of the National Cyber Security Council of the Netherlands.