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Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by mikeash on Friday September 23, 2016 @05:37PM (#12568162)
That seems pretty reasonable too. I like the idea of making the business liable regardless because it more or less automatically optimizes the combined cost of security and losses. Companies will in theory spend money on security until each dollar spent mitigates less than a dollar in losses, then stop.

The trick, of course, is making sure companies estimate their risk properly and don't just screw everyone over by underspending on security and then going bankrupt when hacked. Mandatory liability insurance could help with that, since insurance companies basically exist to assess risk in something like a realistic fashion.

Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by Godel_unicode on Friday September 23, 2016 @07:07PM (#12568573)
So you think that startups with hockey-stick growth should have to design systems which are impervious to extremely sophisticated criminals? That seems unlikely.

Edit: also, the main risk here is password reuse. How is Yahoo supposed to estimate that and why are they on the hook for user's bad security practices?

Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by mikeash on Friday September 23, 2016 @07:32PM (#12568654)
I'm not sure how "mandatory liability insurance" gets translated into "have to design systems which are impervious."
Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by cwillu on Sunday September 25, 2016 @11:47PM (#12579087)
You're forced to spend money to mitigate losses. If you can do something to decrease the losses, or the likelyhood of suffering one, then the insurance will cost less.
Re:Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong... by mikeash on Monday September 26, 2016 @09:41AM (#12581708)
Right, so your spending will increase up to the point where your ROI is 1:1, then you'll stop. That point will be long before you reach imperviousness.