Cyberinsurance Policy

Why cyberinsurance has not improved cybersecurity and what governments can do to make it a more effective tool for cyber risk management. As cybersecurity incidents—ranging from data breaches and denial-of-service attacks to computer fraud and ransomware—become more common, a cyberinsurance industry has emerged to provide coverage for any resulting liability, business interruption, extortion payments, regulatory fines, or repairs. In this book, Josephine Wolff offers the first comprehensive history of cyberinsurance, from the early “Internet Security Liability” policies in the late 1990s to the expansive coverage offered today. Drawing on legal records, government reports, cyberinsurance policies, and interviews with regulators and insurers, Wolff finds that cyberinsurance has not improved cybersecurity or reduced cyber risks. Wolff examines the development of cyberinsurance, comparing it to other insurance sectors, including car and flood insurance; explores legal disputes between insurers and policyholders about whether cyber-related losses were covered under policies designed for liability, crime, or property and casualty losses; and traces the trend toward standalone cyberinsurance policies and government efforts to regulate and promote the industry. Cyberinsurance, she argues, is ineffective at curbing cybersecurity losses because it normalizes the payment of online ransoms, whereas the goal of cybersecurity is the opposite—to disincentivize such payments to make ransomware less profitable. An industry built on modeling risk has found itself confronted by new technologies before the risks posed by those technologies can be fully understood

Uncovering elements of style

This paper relates the style of 16th century Flemish paintings by Goossen van der Weyden (GvdW) to the style of preliminary sketches or underpaintings made prior to executing the painting. Van der Weyden made underpaintings in markedly different styles for reasons as yet not understood by art historians. The analysis presented here starts from a classification of the underpaintings into four distinct styles by experts in art history. Analysis of the painted surfaces by a combination of wavelet analysis, hidden Markov trees and boosting algorithms can distinguish the four underpainting styles with greater than 90% cross-validation accuracy. On a subsequent blind test this classifier provided insight into the hypothesis by art historians that different patches of the finished painting were executed by different hands

ABC for people with HIV: responses to sexual behaviour recommendations among people receiving antiretroviral therapy in Jinja, Uganda

People living with HIV who are taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) are increasingly involved in ‘positive prevention’ initiatives. These are generally oriented to promoting abstinence, ‘being faithful’ (partner reduction) and condom use (ABC). We conducted a longitudinal qualitative study with people living with HIV using ART, who were provided with adherence education and counselling support by a Ugandan nongovernmental organisation, The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO). Forty people were selected sequentially as they started ART, stratified by sex, ART delivery mode (clinic- or home-based) and HIV progression stage (early or advanced) and interviewed at enrolment and at 3, 6, 18 and 30 months. At initiation of ART, participants agreed to follow TASO's positive-living recommendations. Initially poor health prevented sexual activity. As health improved, participants prioritised resuming economic production and support for their children. With further improvements, sexual desire resurfaced and people in relationships cemented these via sex. The findings highlight the limitations of HIV prevention based on medical care/personal counselling. As ART leads to health improvements, social norms, economic needs and sexual desires increasingly influence sexual behaviour. Positive prevention interventions need to seek to modify normative and economic influences on sexual behaviour, as well as to provide alternatives to condoms

Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Disruption: Causes, Metabolic Consequences and Countermeasures.

Circadian (∼ 24 hour) timing systems pervade all kingdoms of life, and temporally optimize behaviour and physiology in humans. Relatively recent changes to our environments, such as the introduction of artificial lighting, can disorganize the circadian system, from the level of the molecular clocks that regulate the timing of cellular activities to the level of synchronization between our daily cycles of behaviour and the solar day. Sleep/wake cycles are intertwined with the circadian system, and global trends indicate that these too are increasingly subject to disruption. A large proportion of the world's population is at increased risk of environmentally-driven circadian rhythm and sleep disruption, and a minority of individuals are also genetically predisposed to circadian misalignment and sleep disorders. The consequences of disruption to the circadian system and sleep are profound and include myriad metabolic ramifications, some of which may be compounded by adverse effects on dietary choices. If not addressed, the deleterious effects of such disruption will continue to cause widespread health problems; therefore, implementation of the numerous behavioural and pharmaceutical interventions that can help restore circadian system alignment and enhance sleep will be important

What we talk about when we talk about cybersecurity: security in internet governance debates

At meetings of internet governance organisations, participants generally agree that improving security is an important goal, but these conversations rarely yield consensus around how to achieve this outcome. One reason security plays this paradoxical role—as both a universal point of agreement and a continued source of contention—in these debates is that it has significantly different meanings to different stakeholders involved in these governance forums. In this paper, we discuss how different stakeholders define and frame internet security issues in the context of governance debates and analyse how these conflicting notions of security continue to shape emerging controversies