A later module addresses cybersecurity policy through a social science framework. At this point, attention can be drawn to one type of policy, known as bug bounty policies. These policies pay individuals for identifying vulnerabilities in a company’s cyber infrastructure.  To identify the vulnerabilities, ethical hackers are invited to try explore the cyber infrastructure using their penetration testing skills.  The policies relate to economics in that they are based on cost/benefits principles.  Read this article https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/7/1/tyab007/6168453?login=trueLinks to an external site.  and write a summary reaction to the use of the policies in your journal.  Focus primarily on the literature review and the discussion of the findings.

As stated in the article, the experiment failed to explain half of the variables that they had set however, they did still identify good things in their experiment. Such as that bug bounties or ethical hackers are still important for newer, lower income businesses as well as top businesses such as google. They discovered that many hackers’ motives were not that of money, but reputation or altruistic motivations. Which means that even experienced hackers are more likely to target mammoth corporations and businesses such as google, whereas new and up-and-coming hackers are more likely to target the smalle businesses to develop experience. They discovered that hackers are particularly price insensitive and inelastic and came up with impressive calculations and portrayed it in an easy-to-read table. It is a shame that they didn’t collect all of the information that they were trying to for their experiment however, this may open the door for future experiments to determine a better and more effective way to eliminate the cyber-intrusions that occur, thus ensuring a safer cyber environment for the future.