The Cyber Economics Conundrum
Economics
To quote the venerated economist Adam Smith – “The real value of money lies in its use”. The discipline of economics has been rooted in the study of how individuals, organizations and societies have utilized resources to fulfill their respective needs. The role of governments in shaping the economic activities through monetary and fiscal policies has long been vital. The inter-dependency between its two branches of microeconomics and macroeconomics has always affected individual and the overall economic decision making.
Cyber Economics
The discipline of economics has a key role when it comes to cybersecurity. There’s a lack of economic efficiency when it comes to key cybersecurity tenets such as people, process, technology, facilities and the prevalent supply chain to maintain a defensible cybersecurity posture. This in turn impacts the market equilibrium leading to a lack of overall preparedness from an operational (cyber) resilience perspective.
Supply & Demand imbalance on the key cybersecurity tenets has resulted in a widening and worsening cybersecurity chasm of unsustainable controls posture and an ill-proportioned cyber expense model.
Fiscal Capital Scenario – In the scenario where cybersecurity budgets have been repeatedly funded, there’s an incoherence on the requisite composition of the portfolio of cyber technology tools needed which can then be implemented with an associated skilled labor/automation in a timely, pervasive and sustainable process. This typically has resulted in expenses from a cybersecurity budgetary perspective without the ability to demonstrate commensurate reduction in cyber risk.
Social Capital Scenario – In another scenario, the dearth of social capital due to lack of awareness, accessibility and ability to source the requisite support to implement the bare minimum set of cybersecurity controls to instill and maintain cybersecurity hygiene has resulted in an ever-expanding threat landscape that’s being continually exploited by bad actors. This is further exacerbated due to the digitally connected nature of the economy where every individual/organization/society is an upstream or downstream component of a wider mesh.
Stay tuned for more about CPLI’s approach on this topic in our upcoming Blogs.
