CAREER: Securing Off-premise Digital Services in the Presence of Strategic Incentives

在过去的十年中，云计算和去中心化计算都有了显著的增长，数据和服务要么存在于远程服务器上，要么分布在许多单独的设备上。这两种模式都提出了类似的安全问题：由于客户对服务流程缺乏完全控制，他们需要确保服务提供商有正确的经济激励，不会行为不端。由于网络安全的主要框架是由传统的内部计算驱动的，我们目前对网络安全的思考往往没有充分强调经济激励。因此，该项目正在进行跨学科研究，以分析在存在激励问题的情况下网络基础设施的良好运作。该项目旨在实现更加多样化和强大的基础设施;提高数字服务效率以提高经济竞争力;促进数字服务提供的技术竞争;将前沿STEM主题带给更广泛的受众，包括经济学家，商业研究人员和公众;并开发教育材料以弥合技术和商业学生之间的差距。 总体目标是从跨学科的角度丰富现有的网络安全分析范式，项目团队正在研究该主题下的几个具体主题，包括云客户和提供商之间的委托代理摩擦，以及如何使用合同理论和密码学的最新进展来处理它，分散系统的长期可持续性，其特点是战略参与者之间的互动以及拜占庭式的故障，以及利用前两个目标的成果来组织一个更高效、公平和包容的数字经济的潜力。在这些分析中，该项目还为商业/经济学研究人员揭示了最近的几项密码学突破。通过提高认识，项目团队旨在鼓励对这些进步的经济和社会效益进行关键评估，并提供新的视角来指导其进一步发展。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The past decade has witnessed significant growth in both cloud and decentralized computing, whereby data and services either live on remote servers or are distributed across many individual devices. Both models raise similar security concerns: As clients lack full control over the service process, they need to make sure that service providers have the right economic incentives to not misbehave. Since the predominant framework in cybersecurity has been motivated by traditional in-house computing, our current thinking about cybersecurity often does not adequately emphasize economic incentives. This project is thus conducting interdisciplinary research to analyze the well-functioning of cyberinfrastructure in the presence of incentive issues. The project aims to enable a more diversified and robust infrastructure; improve digital service efficiency for economic competitiveness; foster competition in digital services provision with technology; bring frontier STEM topics to a broader audience including economists, business researchers, and the general public; and develop education materials to bridge the gap between tech and business students. With the overall objective to enrich the existing paradigm for cybersecurity analysis from a cross-disciplinary perspective, the project team is studying several specific topics under the theme, including the principal-agent frictions between cloud clients and providers, and how to deal with it using both contract theory and recent advances in cryptography, the long-term sustainability of decentralized systems featuring interactions among strategic participants as well as Byzantine faults, and the potential of using results from the first two thrusts to organize a more efficient, fair, and inclusive digital economy. Within these analyses, the project is also illuminating several recent cryptographic breakthroughs for business/economics researchers. By raising awareness, the project team aims to encourage critical assessments of the economic and societal benefits associated with these advances and offer a fresh perspective to guide their further development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.