Economic solutions to improve cybersecurity of governments and smart cities via vulnerability markets

Abstract

Cities are becoming smarter and smarter. While the rapid progress in smart city technologies is changing cities and the lifestyle of the people, it creates also huge attack surfaces for potential cyber attacks. The potential vulnerabilities of smart city products and imminent attacks on smart city infrastructure and services will have significant consequences that can cause substantial economic and noneconomic losses, even chaos, to the cities and the people. In this paper we study alternative economic solutions ranging from incentive mechanisms to market-based solutions to motivate governments, smart product vendors, and vulnerability researchers and finders to improve the cybersecurity of smart cities and e-government. These solutions can be integrated into policy instruments in defending smart cities and e-governments against cyber attacks.