Insurance is often treated purely as a tool to mitigate financial risk. The insured can pay a premium for the confidence that if a cyber-attack occurs, they are indemnified for their losses. This paper advocates that insurance can play a more significant role dealing with offensive cyber, by way of relying upon a reinsurance framework. An appropriate insurance framework which assists a non-state actor before, during, and after an attack can facilitate a coordinated response to supporting a state’s national security objectives. When a state opts to use an offensive cyber operation, there is a risk that the operation will inflict unintended consequences/harms and will trigger a retaliatory attack. The proposed reinsurance framework would assist in improving a business’s resilience and security. An underlying reinsurance regime will ensure the framework transfers risk from a specific business and spreads it across society. This paper argues that by reducing and responding to risks and unintended consequences of offensive cyber operations with reinsurance, a state’s offensive cyber strategy may receive a more favourable reception from society. This reduces the risk that an offensive cyber strategy may delegitimise the state.
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