Disentangling the sources of cyber risk premia

Abstract

We use a methodology based on a machine learning algorithm to quantify firms' cyber risks based on their disclosures and a dedicated cyber corpus. The model can identify paragraphs related to determined cyber-threat types and accordingly attribute several related cyber scores to the firm. The cyber scores are unrelated to other firms' characteristics. Stocks with high cyber scores significantly outperform other stocks. The long-short cyber risk factors have positive risk premia, are robust to all factors' benchmarks, and help price returns. Furthermore, we suggest the market does not distinguish between different types of cyber risks but instead views them as a single, aggregate cyber risk.