Security Is Not Economics

The large number of people who don't grasp what economics is, is not just frustrating but seriously scary and upsetting.

Security is about control, the concepts of security are:

When you have a security failure (such as a disk block becomes corrupt, or a person's house gets torched) then security may drag in equality (this is exactly the same as that).

Security also has first-order logic. So it's possible to say "this and that" or "this or that". Security does not have second-order logic, so it's not possible to say "any one of this". Since it's not possible to say "any one of this", it's also not possible to say "any X and Y of these implies X is identical to Y" (ie, one and exactly one). As a consequence, security has no concept of number, neither cardinals nor ordinals.

The most fundamental concept in economics, 'exactly one of', is completely beyond security. This is to say nothing of more complex concepts in economics which are still so simple that they are considered fundamental, concepts like 'less than', 'greater than', 'as many as', 'fewer than', 'more than', 'first', 'last'. These are all basic economic concepts and not a single one of them is expressible in security terms. To say nothing of the advanced concepts in economics such as 'spurious', 'too many', 'exhaustion', 'starvation', and 'famine'.

In general, security is limited to exactly two fields,

That's it. There are no other pure security fields. Notice how both of these fields deal with absolutes. You have a right to something or you don't. You have a right to this, this and this, but not to that, that and that. Period. Using this does not affect that. And so on.

Economics is completely different. And economics is not merely built on top of security, but wholly transcends it. The laws of economics have nothing to do with the laws of security anymore than the laws of biology are tied to the laws of chemisty. You can create life forms inside of a computer, without any reference to real world chemistry. And you can have economics in broken security systems, you can talk about the economics of things which you have no legitimate right to (eg, stolen property).

There is one inter-disciplinary area between security and economics; the confinement of resources against leakage through meta-channels. This area is notoriously hairy. It is precisely because it is inter-disciplinary that the problem is hairier than a yak in the dead of winter. In comparison, pure security or pure economics problems are quiet, docile and easily led to slaughter.

I'm not quite sure I follow, but both involve various levels of risk/rewards. Economics and security are tightly integrated. It cost resources and time to improve security, for example. Where do you balance the level of security against profits etc.? I do agree there are "externalities" to security, such as the leaking of private customer info into the wild, which can cause impacts far beyond a company's bottom line or existence. It's similar to pollution in that regard, which is also classified as an economic "externality" by economists (not sure of the exact term).

CategorySecurity CategoryEconomics

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