Cybersecurity, Insurance, and Resilience Center for Understanding and Innovation in Technology (CIRCUIT)
About CIRCUIT
CIRCUITis an NSF-supported Industry–University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) led by Indiana University and MIT in collaboration with the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), and industry partners. CIRCUIT advances foundational research to transform how catastrophic cyber risk is understood, modeled, and managed across insurance, finance, and critical infrastructure sectors.
Under the NSF IUCRC model, member organizations pool annual fees to support a shared pre-competitive research portfolio, and collectively define research priorities, with all members receiving access to results, insights, and tools for internal use.
Why CIRCUIT Exists
Cyber risk is increasingly systemic: interconnected technologies, shared digital dependencies, and cascading failures all elevate the potential for catastrophic loss — yet existing cyber models and risk frameworks were built for isolated incidents rather than tail risk and correlated exposures. CIRCUIT closes this gap by producing robust, data-driven research and methods that support underwriting, pricing, portfolio risk aggregation, and regulatory understanding in a world where catastrophic cyber events are a strategic threat.
CIRCUIT’s research agenda is designed to address pressing questions that no single company, regulator, or researcher can solve alone:
Catastrophic Cyber Scenarios & Models Developing stress-tested, dependency-aware scenario sets and modeling approaches that better reflect real-world extreme events for underwriting, capital planning, and reinsurance strategy.
Insurance Terms, Coverage & Clarity Clarifying policy language, coverage boundaries, and exclusions to reduce ambiguity and litigation risk, and align products with actual risk drivers.
Systemic Risk & Dependencies Understanding how shared technologies, identity frameworks, cloud platforms, and supply chains create correlated exposures that current models often overlook.
Data & Control Effectiveness Insights Generating trustworthy data on incident outcomes and the measurable impact of security controls to improve pricing, risk differentiation, and claims defensibility.
Cross-Domain Lessons Applying insights from natural disaster, maritime piracy, public health, and political risk insurance to inform cyber risk governance and resilience thinking.
CIRCUIT membership gives organizations early access to research outputs that inform high-stakes decisions across underwriting, risk management, claims, reinsurance, and regulation.
Member benefits include:
Influence over the research agenda, ensuring relevance to boardroom and marketplace decisions
Decision-ready models, briefs, and tools for risk quantification and governance
Collaborative insights into systemic exposures and controls efficacy
Peer engagement across sectors, including insurers, reinsurers, regulators, CIOs/CISOs, and researchers
Access to emerging talent trained at the intersection of cybersecurity, policy, and risk economics
CIRCUIT’s membership model follows NSF IUCRC best practices: organizations contribute a fixed annual fee that directly funds research activities. Funds are pooled and managed collaboratively through member governance. All members share equal access to research outputs, and may also pursue confidential bilateral projects with CIRCUIT researchers if desired.
Prospective members are invited to attend CIRCUIT’s launch convening in Washington, D.C. on April 22, where leaders from industry, government, and research will preview the center’s agenda and discuss emerging challenges in catastrophic cyber risk.
RSVP
For more information about the upcoming Launch event on April 22nd, please register at the link below.
Prospective members and partners interested in advancing the science of cyber risk and resilience are encouraged to reach out to explore membership opportunities.
Contact: sjshacke@iu.edu For questions about membership, research participation, or the CIRCUIT launch event.
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