Efficient network security as a strategic game

Abstract

We implement game and mechanism design theories to develop a network-wide autonomous consumer-centric and delay-efficient security protocol, DSIC-S. It induces a dominant strategy incentive compatible equilibrium among all rational and selfish nodes. We show that our protocol is network-wide socially desirable and Pareto optimal. DSIC-S guarantees the delivery of consumer’s security services within desired levels, naturally and trustfully, reinforced by our nesting security model. We address resource management and delay-efficiency through synergy of several design aspects. We propose a scenario-based security model with different levels. We incorporate a valuation system to integrate the caused delay at each node in selection of security algorithms without consumer’s knowledge of the actual delays. We achieve this by incorporating our valuation system, in particular that of the consumer’s, in the calculation of the credit transfers with Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) payments and Clarke’s pivotal rule. We prove that DSIC-S design solves the revelation theorem’s problem of misrepresentation of agents’ private information in mechanism design theory. We propose an incentive model and incorporate the valuations in these incentives. The simulations validate our theoretical results. They prove the significance of our model and show the correlation of the credit transfers to actual delays and security valuations.