Information Sharing in Critical Infrastructure Industries: Understanding the Behavioral and Economic Impediments

ABSTRACT:

This paper is a specialized version, abbreviated and focused on application to critical infrastructure protection, of our paper titled “Overcoming Impediments to Information Sharing”.  Impediments to information sharing between firms operating critical infrastructure have been identified as a key security concern in the recently promulgated National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets.  This paper identifies economic and behavioral impediments to information sharing among rivals in general, and rivals operating critical infrastructure in particular.  The paper then assesses conditions affecting the severity of these impediments.  Finally, the paper takes first steps in developing a framework that will predict more accurately when private information sharing would be suboptimal and suggest how better to align private information sharing with social optimality.