This project brings together computer scientists, social scientists, and other stakeholders in an attempt to integrate social sciences into the design of future cyber security mechanisms and systems. The workshop fosters the development of new models of and paradigms for cyber security, and will lead to the development of communities of researchers who today do not interact, but whose cooperative work is necessary for the development of cyber security mechanisms and systems. It will also produce a research agenda in economics and other social sciences related to cyber security that addresses user, economic, and sociopolitical realities.
Established economists will interact with computer scientists who believe that a better alignment of incentives is necessary in order to produce more secure systems. Established social scientists will interact with computer scientists and others who believe that advanced technological security systems must also satisfy non-technological constraints (such as easy to use human-computer interfaces and societal acceptability) in order to be effectively used to provide more secure computer systems.
This workshop will generate interdisciplinary dialogue among experts in cyber security, computer science, economics, business, government, and public policy. It will catalyze and inform new scholarship on the economic impact and effectiveness of global and national cyber security policies using social sciences perspectives and expertise.
By highlighting where current marketplace and other incentives fail and building on the tools from economics and other social sciences to address these issues, this work could lead to the development of actual, working incentives for building cyber security into systems -- rather than the much less effective and much more prevalent security mechanisms that have been added to existing systems. Armed with these results, designers of cyber security systems in mobile, desktop, and network environments will be able to develop more effective mechanisms to solve or mitigate cyber security problems.
Cyber security may present challenges for existing social science theories, since cyber security has global and digital underlying problems, rapidly changing and sometimes unidentifiable actors, and accountability difficulties. Thus, this workshop may lead to the refinement of existing theories. Adapting previous work in the social sciences may inform changes in the architecture and design of hardware and software to ameliorate cyber security problems in the future. Clearer understanding of incentive mechanisms to design cyber security systems will encourage the production of more secure systems in the future, thus promoting the progress of science and advancing national defense and international welfare by having more secure systems in place.
This small invitational workshop brought together computer scientists, social scientists, and others to examine the steps necessarily for integrating social sciences into design of future cybersecurity mechanisms and systems. Its goal was to further the development of communities of researchers who today do not interact, but whose cooperative work is necessary for the development of new and improved cybersecurity systems. The workshop succeeded in better identifying the greater community of interest, devising a recommended reading list for researchers exploring entry into the field, and arriving at a first approximation of what problems are considered important and identifying where significant progress has been made (and where much remains to be done); similarities and differences between computer scientists and social scientists were noted. Topics were identified that may provide a fertile area for joint research. Mechanisms described in the workshop or a follow-up survey that would facilitate interdisciplinary research in the area included a cybersecurity mentor match system, an open access journal, and a dedicated session at a mainstream cybersecurity conference for social scientists working with computer scientists. The complete report of the workshop includes appendices with the original white papers submitted by the workshop participants and detailed biographical sketches of them. It is available at www.cspri.seas.gwu.edu/uploads/2/1/3/2/21324690/research_summary.pdf.
