Cyber-insurance Policy: The Role of Carriers and Regulators in an Emerging Market with Josephine Wolff

Fri, Nov 05, 2021   11:00 AM ‐ 12:00 PM

DIGITAL FUTURES WORKSHOP: Josephine Wolff, Assistant Professor for Cybersecurity Policy, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

Via Zoom | RSVP Here | or email quello@msu.edu

This talk will trace the emergence and continuing growth of the cyber-insurance industry, focusing on how it has evolved in the first twenty years of its existence, where it is headed, why online threats have been particularly challenging for many insurers to model, and what role policy-makers can and should play in helping the market stabilize and grow. Through a series of legal disputes centered on denied claims for cyber-related losses, the talk will examine how insurers have grappled with defining, covering, and modeling cyber risks as cybersecurity threats have evolved and spread across every sector and the role of courts in determining what these policies do and do not cover. It will also look at proposed regulatory interventions for the cyber-insurance market and the continuing controversies surrounding the role of carriers in mitigating and responding to ransomware attacks.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book “You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches” was published by MIT Press in 2018. Her writing on cybersecurity has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Wired. Prior to joining Fletcher, she was an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at the New America Cybersecurity Initiative and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.