the interconnectedness of cyber risk

Description

As digital ecosystems grow more interconnected, cyber risk no longer resides within isolated organizations or systems—it propagates across networks, industries, and borders. This webinar explores the dynamics of systemic cyber risk, drawing on advanced modeling techniques and behavioral insights to uncover how vulnerabilities spread and how human decision-making influences resilience. Participants will engage with leading perspectives on quantifying interdependencies, anticipating cascading failures, and designing effective governance, risk transfer, and mitigation strategies. The discussion will highlight both challenges and opportunities in managing cyber risk in an era defined by pervasive connectivity.

Speakers

Amir Ansari

Chief Technology Advisor, Lenovo

Yevgeniy Vorobeychik

Professor, Washington University in Saint Louis

Dr. Martin Eling

Full Professor of Insurance Economics, University of St. Gallen

Dr. Petar Jevtic

Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University

Linfeng Zhang

Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics at The Ohio State University

Guided Questions

Yevgeniy Vorobeychik

Given your expertise in game-theoretic modeling of security and adversarial machine learning, how can we better anticipate and counter adaptive strategies that attackers may use in connected systems, especially as AI increasingly underpins critical infrastructure?

Dr. Martin Eling

Your recent paper published in Risk Sciences, Optimism bias and its impact on cyber risk management decisions, explores how optimism bias and loss aversion influence firms’ decisions on cyber risk management, particularly why many firms stick with self-protection and avoid additional measures like cyber insurance. Could you give our audience a brief overview of your study and its key insights on how these behavioral factors shape market behavior and systemic risk? In an interconnected environment where one firm’s security posture affects others, how does optimism bias amplify systemic cyber risk And what interventions, market-based or regulatory, could realistically counteract this bias without stifling innovation?

Dr. Petar Jevtic

Your paper develops a probabilistic framework using percolation theory to model cyber risk loss distributions for drone delivery networks, highlighting how network topology and communication protocols affect cascading failures. Could you briefly introduce this work and explain why understanding these interdependencies is critical for insurers and operators as drone delivery scales up? How do you see these interdependencies in drone swarms comparing to other critical infrastructures, like supply chains or financial networks? Could similar modeling approaches help us understand systemic cyber risk across sectors?

Amir Ansari

Given your experience advising CxOs and leading Lenovo’s advanced services strategy, what practical steps do you believe organizations can take to anticipate and contain cascading cyber risks across supply chains and critical infrastructure, moving beyond compliance checklists toward true resilience?