Cyber risk measurement via loss distribution approach and GARCH model

Abstract

The growing trend of cyber risk has put forward the importance of cyber risk management. Cyber risk is defined as an accidental or intentional risk related to information and technology assets. Although cyber risk is a subset of operational risk, it is reported to be handled differently from operational risk due to its different features of the loss distribution. In this study, we aim to detect the characteristics of cyber loss and find a suitable model by measuring value at risk (VaR).We use the loss distribution approach (LDA) and the time series model to describe cyber losses of financial and non-financial business sectors, provided in SAS® OpRisk Global Data. Peaks over threshold (POT) method is also incorporated to improve the risk measurement. For the financial sector, the LDA and GARCH model with POT perform better than those without POT, respectively. The same result is obtained for the non-financial sector, although the differences are not significant. We also build a two-dimensional model reflecting the dependence structure between financial and non-financial sectors through a bivariate copula and check the model adequacy through VaR