RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week July8 toJuly 14 Featured Investigation Insurance works because the unpredictable is, well, predictable - so long as you have enough data. Disease and storms only seem arbitrary until they are tamed by the actuary. But as John Wasik reports for RealClearInvestigations, one of the biggest threats to the global economy - cyberattacks against businesses and government - is so new and unwieldy that it is hard to calculate risk and exposure. But that isn't stopping insurance companies from selling policies at a brisk pace. And therein lies a problem -- the possibility of a financial panic built on uncertainty: Some of the biggest names in the insurance industry, including AIG, CNA and Chubb, are now offering cyber policies to meet skyrocketing demand, as hackers wage attacks on computer systems seemingly at will around the world. There are no firm numbers regarding the size of the cyber insurance market, but most analysts say it has been growing at an annual rate of 20 to 30 percent since 2013. The data resource Statista estimates that about $4 billion in policies were sold in 2017 and expects that figure to rise to nearly double by 2020. Nearly every major company is mobilized to defend against cyberattacks. But some industry experts warn that ever-evolving cyberattacks are far less predictable than, say, lifespans projected from actuarial data used to price life insurance policies. Many doubt that the business world is adequately insured against cyberthreats and, even if it were, whether insurers would be prepared to cover catastrophic losses. … Informing such worries is the 2008-2009 meltdown, which was triggered by credit default swaps, obscure derivatives held by most global financial institutions that were not insured by conventional deposit insurance - thought to hold some $60 trillion in notional value at the end of 2007. Even AIG, one of the world's largest insurers currently selling cyber insurance, was bailed out during the last crash because of its exposure to swaps. Now the hyper-networked nature of the information economy introduces new vulnerabilities. If anything, the opportunities for attacks have greatly multiplied since 2008. 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