Cyber Insurers as De Facto Regulators:  How insurers regulate cybersecurity and privacy law

Overview

Researchers at UCI are conducting a study of the potential role of insurance companies as de facto regulators for private sector cybersecurity. This study is being led by Professor Shauhin Talesh and UCI’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute (CPRI) Executive Director Bryan Cunningham.  We hope to raise awareness about the important role cyber insurance plays in society to help prevent and assist with data breach events. We’re interviewing brokers, underwriters, insurers, risk managers, lawyers, etc. We are also evaluating the role of big data, analyzing insurance policy language and observing cyber risk conferences. We hope our research will help to understand how and whether cyber insurance can help organizations become more cyber secure and help raise awareness about the important role cyber insurance and security experts play in society.

We also expect to publish recommendations for enhancing cybersecurity for all via better leveraging of cyber insurers for setting standards for customers and incentivizing compliance.

Project Team

• Principal Investigator: Shauhin Talesh, Professor, Computer Science
• Co-Principal Investigator: Bryan Cunningham, B.A., JD, Executive Director, UCI Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute
• Graduate Student Researchers:
  • Amruta Trivedi
  • Stephanie Lee
  • Hedyeh Tirgardoon

Events

In December, we presented our research at the Univ. of Pennsylvania law school’s Cyber insurance conference

Researcher Shauhin Talesh and the cyber insurance research project were selected as part of the Beall Applied Innovation Fellows Program  

Papers

Coming soon