Computer Security as a Negative Experience Good

Presented at Notacon 1 (2004), Unknown date/time (Unknown duration)

One problem with most computer security is that its successes are transparent, but its failures are blatantly obvious. A New York Times story about how a hacker stole millions of credit cards from you is quite painful, but a hacker deciding that your security is too strong to be worth trying is really hard to detect. That is to say that security is a "negative experience" good, where only the negative experiences can be measured. While a lack of negative experiences might mean that your security system is working well, it doesn't necessarily. I will address the question of how you measure the effectiveness (and therefore "value") of computer security solutions in light of this problem.

Presenters:

• Rick Wash
  Rick Wash is a graduate student at the University of Michigan Center for Information Technology Integration who studies Computer Security, Cryptography, and Information Economics. He has recently been studying Trusted Computing and the Spam Email Problem. He did his undergraduate in Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University.