Risk Assessment Uncertainties in Cybersecurity Investments

When undertaking cybersecurity risk assessments, it is important to be able to assign numeric values to metrics to compute the final expected loss that represents the risk that an organization is exposed to due to cyber threats. Even if risk assessment is motivated by real-world observations and data, there is always a high chance of assigning inaccurate values due to different uncertainties involved (e.g., evolving threat landscape, human errors) and the natural difficulty of quantifying risk. Existing models empower organizations to compute optimal cybersecurity strategies given their financial constraints, i.e., available cybersecurity budget. Further, a general game-theoretic model with uncertain payoffs (probability-distribution-valued payoffs) shows that such uncertainty can be incorporated in the game-theoretic model by allowing payoffs to be random. This paper extends previous work in the field to tackle uncertainties in risk assessment that affect cybersecurity investments. The findings from simulated examples indicate that although uncertainties in cybersecurity risk assessment lead, on average, to different cybersecurity strategies, they do not play a significant role in the final expected loss of the organization when utilising a game-theoretic model and methodology to derive these strategies. The model determines robust defending strategies even when knowledge regarding risk assessment values is not accurate. As a result, it is possible to show that the cybersecurity investments’ tool is capable of providing effective decision support.