Chances Are: The Odds of Disaster

Chances Are…

1. What is the estimated cost to insurance companies resulting from 9/11?

a. $5.5 billion b. $19.6 billion

c. $40.2 billion d. $80.3 billion

2. What was the cost of the next biggest insurance event ever, Hurricane Andrew?

a. $5.5 billion b. $19.6 billion

c. $40.2 billion d. $80.3 billion

Of the 20 most expensive insurance events of 2000:

3. How many were computer related?

4. How many were weather related?

5. What premium does Zurich North America estimate a bank with $5 billion in assets will pay for cybersecurity insurance?

a. $100 million b. $10 million

c. $1 million d. $275,000

6. If all Fortune 1000 companies in America bought that level of coverage, they would pay a combined premium of $275 million, an amount of money equal to what?

a. The amount needed to certify about 611,000 CISSPs

b. The daily losses to airlines following 9/11

c. Roughly one-tenth the estimated losses from the Nimda virus

d. All of the above

7. About how many lines of code are required to eliminate the occurrence of a buffer overflow in software?

a. 1 b. 135 c. 1,100 d. 6,000

8. According to experts, what percentage of computer attacks would that eliminate?

a. 5 b. 10 c. 15 d. 60

9. What is the significance of “B⟨PL”?

a. It’s the pseudonym of the hacker who defaced the Girl Scout’s website

b. It’s a rule for creating elliptic curve encryption where B is binary code that must equal less than the product of P packets and L loose strings

c. It’s the classic formula for determining negligence where B is cost of prevention, P is probability of a bad event and L is the amount of loss from the event

d. It’s the one line of code required to eliminate a buffer overflow

10. True or False: A major corporation has been found guilty of negligence due to information security shortcomings.

11. According to the Center for National Software Studies, the odds a company will admit to being hacked are about the same as what?

a. The odds of arriving at a traffic light when it’s green, 1 in 3

b. The odds of being hurt in a car accident, 1 in 75

c. The odds a golfer will sink a hole in one, 1 in 10,700

d. The odds of being struck by lightning, 1 in 600,000

12. The odds of a company being attacked by hackers are about the same as what?

a. The odds of starring in a movie, 1 in 385,000

b. The odds of a pregnant woman having twins, 1 in 50

c. The odds you’ll wear glasses in your lifetime, 1 in 2

d. The odds you’ll die, 1 in 1

13. Complete the following quote [by Andrew Lang]: “An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as…

a. a way to fudge forecasts.”

b. an excuse for research and an explanation for failure.”

c. a drunken man uses lamppostsfor support rather than for illumination.”

d. the basis for inflated insurance rates.”

Answers: 1. C 2. B 3. 0 4. 15 5. D 6. D 7. A 8. D

9. C 10. False 11. A 12. D 13. C

How’d You Do?

0-5 correct: You should take Actuarial Science 101

6-12 correct: You should teach Actuarial Science 101

13 correct: Chances are, you cheated