The issue at the heart of ransomware insurance will be familiar to most parents of young children: rewarding bad behavior only invites more of the same, so it’s generally not a good idea. But critics of the ransomware insurance industry argue that’s exactly what the practice does.

Ransomware insurance has by now long been suspected of excusing lax security practices and inspiring confidence among cybercriminals that they’ll receive a timely payment following a successful breach.

Exactly how widespread ransomware claims by businesses are is difficult to determine since companies don’t exactly jump at the chance to discuss their run-ins with ransomware publicly. But it’s safe to assume that claims have risen alongside an undeniable surge in ransomware attacks.

Another issue with the cyber insurance industry stems from the fact that paying a ransom is no guarantee that data will be returned. In our recent report on the hidden costs of ransomware, nearly 20 percent of respondents were not able to recover their data even after making an extortion payment.

The Paris-based insurance giant AXA broke new ground this year by announcing it would stop insuring against cyberattacks, citing a lack of guidance from French regulators about the practice. It’s worth remembering that the FBI “does not support paying a ransom in response to a ransomware attack.”

So, if U.S.-based insurers were to follow AXA’s logic, they too would stop covering ransomware payments. So far, few have. For now.

Doomed to be a short-lived sector?

The industry publication InsuranceJournal.com recently wrote in a post on its site that “pressure is building on the industry to stop reimbursing for ransoms.” Before ransomware went rampant, the article notes, cybersecurity insurance was a profitable sub-category of the insurance business as a whole. But those days may be numbered. The sector is now “teetering on the edge of profitability” according to the post’s author.

It’s well-known within cybersecurity circles that ransomware actors will conduct advanced research to determine if a potential target is insured. If so, it’s hardly a deterrent since it increases the likelihood a payment will be made.

It winds up being a self-reinforcing cycle. As ProPublica wrote in its study of the industry, “by rewarding hackers, it encourages more ransomware attacks, which in turn frighten more businesses and government agencies into buying policies.”

A commonly cited defense of ransomware insurance is that they not only protect against the cost of the ransom, but also against knock-on expenses from ransomware like downtime, reallocation of tech resources and reputational damage. We know from our own research that these costs can be significant, so there’s some validity to this argument.