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An Anonymous Coward writes:
According to Technology Review, some business leaders have decided that cyber attacks are just another fact of life and they might as well give up on fixing the problem through IT. And buy insurance instead.
Of course, now the insurance companies have the problem of calculating risk and accompanying premiums.
People are starting to view cybersecurity as a business risk instead of an IT problem, says Arvind Parthasarathi, CEO of Cyence, a three-year-old firm that helps insurers model cyber risks. That means recognizing this is not a problem with a clear solution, but a risk that can be managed, though not eliminated. Now, says Parthasarathi, executives are asking, "How much risk am I comfortable keeping?"
Insurers are asking the same question as they try to determine how to price new cybersecurity policies. The modern cyber threat is complex and rapidly evolving. The most pressing challenge is quantifying the risk of a cyber catastrophe hitting many policyholders at once, estimating the maximum loss in the worst-case scenario. That's what insurers failed to do before Hurricane Andrew. [Which caused some insurance companies to fail.]
A cyber disaster comparable in scale with Hurricane Andrew is hard to model in part because one hasn't happened yet. Last October, we got a glimpse of one way such a calamity might unfold when hackers used a network of commandeered webcams, DVRs, and other Internet of things devices to launch a massive denial of service attack on Dyn, a major router of Internet traffic. [...] The cost of the Dyn attack is not yet clear, but a recent four-hour outage of Amazon's S3 cloud storage system (which was not the result of a cyberattack) cost S&P 500 companies at least $150 million, according to an estimate from Cyence. It is not hard to imagine a large-scale attack on a cloud service causing billions in losses.
The article covers other cases including losses from a really major attack.
Your PHB said that your security requests were too expensive. And now he (or his bosses) have decided that it's not even possible to be secure. Time to throw in the towel?
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:40AM (2 children)
You're not picturing this thing on a grand enough scale. The country (business and government) grows fearful of all that liability, so they hand off liability to the insurance companies. Those companies start writing "best practices" policies, and requirements for coverage. The insurance companies note that the common sheeple pose no threat - and those sheeple are all using the latest Microsoft offerings. After much negotiation, it is determined that the Unix-likes all pose threats to the insurance companies "secure model". Hell, the browser you use could eventually be dictated by insurance companies - we'll all use Edge to connect to business, banking, or government sites, because everything else poses a threat of some sort.
It isn't just me, FFS, it's the whole nation.
Look at your work environment. Neither you, nor me, nor any other person in this country is smart enough to determine when we should put on a pair of safety glasses. Because the insurance company says so, you wear your safety glasses from clock-in to clock-out, unless you're in the restroom, or the breakroom. Hard hats, if applicable, never come off of your head. I wear steel toes by choice, but people who don't have to wear them anyway. I could go on and on about the silly crap that insurance companies already make us do. You should revisit the history of seat belt laws. Almost every state strongly resisted the enactment of seat belt laws, but the insurance companies lobbied the feds to do an end run around constitutional questions. And - today, almost everyone is brainwashed into doing the insurance companie's bidding. You don't even realize that you're brainwashed because you grew up with all the bullshit. You believe that only an idiot would CHOOSE to not use a seat belt.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:39AM (1 child)
You believe that only an idiot would CHOOSE to not use a seat belt.
Yeah, I do believe that, because every reputable analysis and all first-hand evidence I've encountered in my life indicate that seat belts dramatically increase the safety of the car occupants who use them. They are, according to all reasonable evidence and analyses I've encountered one of the single most effective and inexpensive car safety inventions of the last 50 years. They probably saved the life or prevented the serious injury of at least one of my family members. Using a seat belt has a downside of zero or close to zero and a huge, huge upside.
I should know better than to argue with you by now, but railing against Big Seat Belt is a new level, even for you. Why, exactly, do you think not wearing a seat belt is a reasonable life choice? I'm not asking for you to argue against seat belt legislation, because that's not what you said. You think seat belts shouldn't be mandatory, because Libretardianism or something, whatever. That's not what you said. You said people who think using a seat belt when a car is the totally obviously correct choice to make as an individual are brainwashed. So: why?
Oh, and don't talk about infants or whatever. The government's car safety publications talk about the special things you need to do to keep infant car occupants safe, so we know they need special handling. As an adult human of average weight and height, why should I not use a seat belt in a car? Please un-brainwash me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:09AM
Even those baby things are of no statistical benefit to wearing a seat belt and sitting in the back seat from about the age of 2 years. Most of the benefits to infants is just not sitting in the front seat, or jumping around lose in the car. All the other fancy shit is barely better than just a seat belt in the back seat. Which obviously is life saving.