AI Cyber Lunch: Josephine Wolff on "The History of Cyberinsurance & War Exclusions"

NotPetya was described by the White House as "the most destructive and costly cyber-attack in history" and five years later, many of the companies hit by the Russian cyber attack are still sorting out who will pay for the damages and, in particular, what portion their insurance will cover. Several insurers have denied NotPetya-related claims on the grounds that the cyber attack was a "warlike action" because it was perpetrated by the Russian government and therefore excluded from most standard insurance policies. This has led to a series of legal disputes about what constitutes cyberwar and when cyberinsurance carriers are obligated to pay for damages linked to state-sponsored attacks. This talk will examine these disputes through the lens of the history of cyberinsurance, tracing the emergence and continuing growth of the cyberinsurance industry and describing 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. It will also consider how carriers and policyholders are responding to the disputes over NotPetya in light of the current war between Russia and Ukraine and the uncertainty around whether insurance coverage would apply to state-sponsored cyber attacks that occurred in the context of a war involving the use of physical force.