Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2026

Abstract

This Article explores the growing yet underexamined role of the commercial cyber insurance market in shaping the United States' approach to cybersecurity readiness. It argues that, as cyber threats against U.S. critical infrastructure and essential services increase, commercial cyber insurance has quietly come to function as a de facto governance tool in national cybersecurity. In hospitals, water and energy systems, and other public-facing sectors, policy language, underwriting questionnaires, and post-breach claims practices help define what counts as "reasonable" security, influence how organizations plan for and respond to incidents, and affect the pace and scope of recovery after an attack. Yet cyber insurance is a private risk-transfer mechanism designed to limit insurer exposure, not a public safety framework. Drawing on case studies involving critical infrastructure and pandemic-era business interruption litigation, as well as recent disputes over exclusions in cyber policies, this Article shows how doctrinal uncertainty, limits of insurability, and market instability undermine cyber insurance's capacity to manage systemic cyber risks with national security implications. It then situates these developments in national security law and insurance as governance scholarship to argue that national cybersecurity is a public responsibility that cannot be delegated to private actors such as insurers. This Article proposes a model of coordinated governance in which federal actors establish baseline cyber and insurance standards, align insurance requirements with NIST and CISA guidance, and clarify coverage expectations for ransomware and other catastrophic events. Under this model, cyber insurance can play a useful secondary role in which it supports, but does not replace, a more intentional and unified national cybersecurity strategy.

Publication Title

Belmont Law Review

Volume

13

Issue

2

Article Number

1173

First Page

410

Last Page

451

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