RSAC 2026: Cyber insurance and the rise of ransomware

At RSAC 2026, John Kindervag proposed the idea that the rise of the cyber insurance industry has motivated ransomware threat actors to escalate their attacks and ask for more.

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• Richard Livingston, Site Editor

John Kindervag opened his session at RSAC 2026 Conference with a compelling proposition: The advent of life insurance offered a new motivation to commit murder.

The Forrester alumnus, who is widely credited as the creator of the zero-trust security model, and current chief evangelist at Illumio, argued that, while murder has always been part of society, life insurance layered a financial incentive on top of an ancient crime.

Today, he said, that equates to cyber insurance giving digital criminals a lucrative new reason to escalate the decades-old practice of ransomware fraud.