LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Pullin <andrew@hotspurbgc.com.au>
  To  : Fraser Farrell <fraser@trilobytes.com.au>
        <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 18:30:49 +1000

Re: hacker insurance

Hi All,
    This sounds suspiciously like a great way for insurers
to either make an absolute fortune, or lose buckets of
money. O.K. I know that insurers are supposed to make money,
but the only way I can see how they do it here is to charge
more than an attack would cost. Just thinking about this off
the top of my head, what if some company was attacked and
made a claim.

    "Sir we will not pay you because you drive an Operating
System that is very easy to break into, hundreds are broken
every day. You say that you left the Security patch off
because a staff member left and you didn't know. Well
accidentally leaving your Operating System unlocked voids
the Policy."

    And then there is the problem of a mass system attack
that nobody knew about, the equivalent of a Hurricane
hitting Florida (Hmm, didn't SGIC get into trouble with this
a few years ago?).

    "Sorry Sir we cannot pay your claim because the Company
is Bankrupt because every Machine on the Internet was hit
with a Worm last night."

    It sounds to me that Insuring for this sort of thing is
so risky that I wonder why Insurers would offer it at all.
Lloyds of London (Space Division) almost went bankrupt about
18 months ago because they insured high risk items. There
was a spate of Satellite and Rocket failures that meant that
for about 6-9 months if just 1 more rocket or Satellite
failed then so did that division of Lloyds. Anyhow that was
my 2c worth.
    Cheers!
        Andrew.


----- Original Message -----
From: Fraser Farrell <fraser@trilobytes.com.au>
To: <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 5:32 PM
Subject: hacker insurance


> ZDnet has an interesting story about one insurer's view of
Windows servers:
>
> www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2766045,00.html
>
>
> cheers,
> Fraser Farrell
>
>
>
> --
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