Sustainability of Information Security Investment in Online Social Networks: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach

Guang Zhu; Hu Liu; Mining Feng

doi:10.3390/math6100177

journal article Open Access Sep 26, 2018

Sustainability of Information Security Investment in Online Social Networks: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach

Guang Zhu

Hu Liu

Mining Feng

Mathematics Vol. 6 No. 10 pp. 177 · MDPI AG

View at Publisher Save 10.3390/math6100177

Abstract

With the rapid development of information technologies, security violations in online social networks (OSN) have emerged as a critical issue. Traditional technical and organizational approaches do not consider economic factors, which are increasingly important to sustain information security investment. In this paper, we develop an evolutionary game model to study the sustainability of information security investment in OSN, and propose a quantitative approach to analyze and optimize security investment. Additionally, we examine a contract with an incentive mechanism to eliminate free riding, which helps sustain the security investment. Numerical examples are provided for illustration and simulation purposes, leading to several countermeasures and suggestions. Our analytical results show that the optimal strategy of information security investment not only is correlated with profit growth coefficients and investment costs, but is also influenced significantly by the profits from free riding. If the profit growth coefficients are prohibitively small, both OSN service providers and online platforms will not choose to sustain investment based on small profits. As profit growth coefficients increase, there is a higher probability that game players will invest. Another major finding is that the (Invest, Invest) profile is much less sensitive to the change of profit growth coefficients and the convergent speed of this scenario is faster than the other profiles. The government agency can use the proposed model to determine a proper incentive or penalty to help both parties reach the optimal strategies and thus improve OSN security.

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References

Details

Published: Sep 26, 2018
Vol/Issue: 6(10)
Pages: 177
License: View

Authors

G

Guang Zhu

School of Management Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; China Institute of Manufacturing Development, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

H

Hu Liu

School of Management Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

M

Mining Feng

China Institute of Manufacturing Development, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China Award: 71503133

National Social Science Foundation of China Award: 16ZDA054

Cite This Article

Guang Zhu, Hu Liu, Mining Feng (2018). Sustainability of Information Security Investment in Online Social Networks: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach. Mathematics, 6(10), 177. https://doi.org/10.3390/math6100177

Sustainability of Information Security Investment in Online Social Networks: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach

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