Information security is an appropriate response to rivals' development of competitor analysis systems. This paper provides a framework for using information security in such a fashion. The paper also provides a five-step approach toward allocating information security funds in an effort to protect a firm from becoming a meaningful part of the competition's competitor analysis system.

• Gordon, Lawrence A. and Martin P. Loeb, “Expenditures on Competitor Analysis and Information Security: A Management Accounting Perspective,” Chapter in Management Accounting in the Digital Economy (Oxford University Press), A. Bhimini (ed), 2003, pp. 95-111.

An underlying premise for both expenditures on competitor analysis and expenditures on information security is that information is an economic good with strategic value. In this paper, a game theoretic model of a market shared by two rivals is presented and analyzed in order to shed light on how expenditures on competitor analysis affect, and are affected by, expenditures on information security. The paper also discusses the importance of these information economy based issues for management accounting.