Category Archives: Cyber insurance

28/9/19: Evidence of Systemic Risk from Major Cybersecurity Breaches


In our post for Columbia Law School's CLS Blue Sky Blog, myself and Shaen Corbet explain in non-technical terms our ground-breaking findings on systemic nature of cybersecurity risks in financial markets:


Our study is the first in the literature showing evidence of systemic contagion from cyber attacks on one company to other companies and stock exchanges.

Based on these findings, we have a chapter forthcoming in an academic volume on the future of regulation, proposing a novel mechanism for regulatory detection, monitoring and enforcement of cybersecurity risks. We will post this chapter when it goes to print, so stay tuned.

20/9/19: New paper: Systematic risk contagion from cyber events


Our new paper, "What the hack: Systematic risk contagion from cyber events" is now available at International Review of Financial Analysis in pre-print version here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521919300274.

Highlights include:

  • We examine the impact of cybercrime and hacking events on equity market volatility across publicly traded corporations.
  • The volatility generated due to cybercrime events is shown to be dependent on the number of clients exposed.
  • Significantly large volatility effects are presented for companies who find themselves exposed to hacking events.
  • Corporations with large data breaches are punished substantially in the form of stock market volatility and significantly reduced abnormal stock returns.
  • Companies with lower levels of market capitalisation are found to be most susceptible to share price reductions.
  • Minor data breaches appear to be relatively unpunished by the stock market.

28/11/17: Hacking the market: Systemic contagion from cybersecurity breaches


Our article for LSE Business Review is now live on the site: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/11/28/hacking-the-market-systemic-contagion-from-cybersecurity-breaches/.

You can read (free) our paper, on which this article is based, in full here: Corbet, Shaen and Gurdgiev, Constantin, What the Hack: Systematic Risk Contagion from Cyber Events (September 7, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3033950.

Enjoy.