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IPFS News Link • Technology: Software

A Futures Market for Computer Security

• Brian Krebs via TechnologyReview.com
Information security researchers from academia, industry, and the U.S. intelligence community are collaborating to build a pilot "prediction market" capable of anticipating major information security events before they occur.

A prediction market is similar to a regular stock exchange, except the "stocks" are simple statements that the exchange's members are encouraged to evaluate. Traders will buy and sell "shares" of a stock based on the strength of their confidence about the future outcome—with an overall goal of increasing the value of their portfolios, which will in turn earn them some sort of financial reward. Traders may choose to buy or sell additional shares of a stock, and that buying and selling activity pushes the stock price up or down, just as in a real market.

Some of the stocks being considering cover a few months, such as: "The volume of spam e-mail will increase by 10 percent in the third quarter of 2011." Others will ask participants to gauge the likelihood of far-off events, such as the chance that the U.S. House of Representatives will pass a bill with "cyber" and "security" in its title in the first session of the 112th Congress, or whether broadly used encryption algorithms will be defeated within the next 24 months.

 

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by PureTrust
Entered on:

Here is an idea that is sort of the reverse of the stock market idea. Think of using Bitcoin security technology where folks could start a gambling company or a MLM company with nobody being able to find out who the company was, or where the products were be shipped from or to, except by becoming a customer and tracking the UPS return address. And even THAT might be made secure through the use of proxies with UPS.

All the information could be stored on individual home computers so that the only way Government might have a chance of finding the info would be to confiscate all the home computers and check them all.

Who needs a stock market to develop the security? Any teen who is a computer whiz can do it from home and sell it using Bitcoin.



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