TY - JOUR
T1 - Modeling secrecy and deception in a multiple-period attacker-defender signaling game
AU - Zhuang, Jun
AU - Bier, Vicki M.
AU - Alagoz, Oguzhan
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the United States Department of Homeland Security through the National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) under Grant Number 2007-ST-061-000001. However, any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Department of Homeland Security. We thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.
PY - 2010/6/1
Y1 - 2010/6/1
N2 - In this paper, we apply game theory to model strategies of secrecy and deception in a multiple-period attacker-defender resource-allocation and signaling game with incomplete information. At each period, we allow one of the three possible types of defender signals-truthful disclosure, secrecy, and deception. We also allow two types of information updating-the attacker updates his knowledge about the defender type after observing the defender's signals, and also after observing the result of a contest (if one occurs in any given time period). Our multiple-period model provides insights into the balance between capital and expense for defensive investments (and the effects of defender private information, such as defense effectiveness, target valuations, and costs), and also shows that defenders can achieve more cost-effective security through secrecy and deception (possibly lasting more than one period), in a multiple-period game. This paper helps to fill a significant gap in the literature. In particular, to our knowledge, no past work has studied defender secrecy and deception in a multiple-period game. Moreover, we believe that the solution approach developed and applied in this paper would prove useful in other types of multiple-period games.
AB - In this paper, we apply game theory to model strategies of secrecy and deception in a multiple-period attacker-defender resource-allocation and signaling game with incomplete information. At each period, we allow one of the three possible types of defender signals-truthful disclosure, secrecy, and deception. We also allow two types of information updating-the attacker updates his knowledge about the defender type after observing the defender's signals, and also after observing the result of a contest (if one occurs in any given time period). Our multiple-period model provides insights into the balance between capital and expense for defensive investments (and the effects of defender private information, such as defense effectiveness, target valuations, and costs), and also shows that defenders can achieve more cost-effective security through secrecy and deception (possibly lasting more than one period), in a multiple-period game. This paper helps to fill a significant gap in the literature. In particular, to our knowledge, no past work has studied defender secrecy and deception in a multiple-period game. Moreover, we believe that the solution approach developed and applied in this paper would prove useful in other types of multiple-period games.
KW - Dynamic programming
KW - Game theory
KW - Multi-period game
KW - Secrecy and deception
KW - Signaling game
KW - Truthful disclosure
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ejor.2009.07.028
DO - 10.1016/j.ejor.2009.07.028
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:70350704685
VL - 203
SP - 409
EP - 418
JO - European Journal of Operational Research
JF - European Journal of Operational Research
SN - 0377-2217
IS - 2
ER -