Abstract The rate of cyberattacks worldwide is increasing. Many of these attacks have resulted in financial, reputational, and operational losses. Despite these threats, it is difficult to predict how causative factors will evolve because attacks and bad actors are sophisticated and unpredictable. The maritime industry is not immune to these attacks and has been the subject of many over the years. While some guidelines exist to evaluate vulnerabilities, they often lack the computational capacity to quantitatively estimate the risk levels of maritime companies. There is therefore an urgent need to develop utility models that can serve as a computational bridge between technical vulnerability and financial underwriting. This paper, therefore, presents a utility model to assess the risk level for organizations vulnerable to maritime cyberattacks. The research examines a range of factors that affect the likelihood of a successful cyber-attack and develops a Bayesian-based model. The model is demonstrated using case studies involving data breaches and ransomware attacks. This study would benefit the insurance industry by identifying the risk factors and using them to estimate risk premiums. The outcome of the study could help build emergency response and contingency plans to address cyber breaches and to design resilient cyber systems as well.
Afenyo et al. (Mon,) studied this question.