Market Models of Security Investments with Shared Spectrum

Security is a critical concern in shared spectrum environments, where attacks can degrade service and influence market interactions between competing service providers (SPs). This paper examines market models in shared spectrum defense, focusing on the strategic interplay between SPs and attackers within licensed shared bands. We develop models to study SPs’ investments in security against revenue-minimizing attackers, i.e., attackers that account for the underlying competition between SPs and seek to minimize the revenue they obtain in this market. We further consider both competitive and collaborative setting. In the competitive setting, we characterize equilibrium investment outcomes, while in the collaborative case, we consider the investments made by a central planner. Our numerical results show that at times the competitive setting can lead to over-investment.