A Semantic Approach for Automating Knowledge in Policies of Cyber Insurance Services

Abstract

With the rapid adoption of web services, the need to protect against various threats has become imperative for organizations operating in cyberspace. Organizations are increasingly opting to get financial cover in the event of losses due to a security incident. This helps them safeguard against the threat posed to third-party services that the organization uses. It is in the organization’s interest to understand the insurance requirements and procure all necessary direct and liability coverages. This helps transfer some risks to the insurance providers. However, cyber insurance policies often list details about coverages and exclusions using legalese that can be difficult to comprehend. Currently, it takes a significant manual effort to parse and extract knowledgeable rules from these lengthy and complicated policy documents. We have developed a semantically rich machine processable framework to automatically analyze cyber insurance policy and populate a knowledge graph that efficiently captures various inclusion and exclusion terms and rules embedded in the policy. In this paper, we describe this framework that has been built using technologies from AI, including Semantic Web, Modal/ Deontic Logic, and Natural Language Processing. We have validated our approach using industry standards proposed by the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and applying it against publicly available policies of 7 cyber insurance vendors. Our system will enable cyber insurance seekers to automatically analyze various policy documents and make a well-informed decision by identifying its inclusions and exclusions.