Will insurance improve cyber-security practice for businesses?

Abstract

IT-driven industrial control systems (ICSs) in smart cities form the backbone behind the successful operation of most interdependent business service sectors that include (but are not limited to) healthcare, energy, manufacturing, transportation, retail, finance, information, and education. The potent combination of IoT (projected to contribute to a multi-trillion dollar smart-city economy by 2025), smartphones, and data science is continuously opening doors to a plethora of automated, cost-effective, and performance-enhancing pervasive client services in these sectors that are benefiting businesses and day-to-day lifestyles as a whole. However, these benefits necessarily have to be considered in parallel with mounting concerns related to effective management of inevitable cyber-risks and the (occasional catastrophic) adverse socio-commercial impacts they may have on businesses and their clients.

How about living in a pervasive/ubiquitous computing world oblivious to security risk impacts where cyber-risk management (CRM) is sold as a third-party service (CRMaaS) that on one-hand shields businesses from these adverse impacts, on the other hand, behaviourally nudges the former to voluntarily 'invest' in good cyber-hygiene as a 'way-of-life?