Cybersecurity Risk in IT Outsourcing—Challenges and Emerging Realities

IT outsourcing (ITO) is a major contributor to cybersecurity risk exposure. When organizations outsource IT needs and/or cybersecurity functions, they explicitly or implicitly assume that ITO providers bear the responsibility for cybersecurity risk. In reality, ITO clients’ risk profile changes and becomes a combination of their risks and a subset of their ITO provider risks. This paper discusses cybersecurity risk challenges that are exacerbated in the ITO context and a commonly made argument that ITO client-provider trust can improve the management of cybersecurity risk. The paper proceeds to contrast three views on how to build trust with ITO providers: decision-theoretic view, transparency-based view, and market-based view. It shows that the market-based view is most likely to emerge as the dominant model for client-provider trust. Market-based trust involves market mechanisms that reward and penalize ITO service providers for obtaining cybersecurity certifications from independent, trusted third-party agencies. Specifically, the same way firms that obtain cybersecurity certifications benefit from positive market reactions that create firm value, so do firms that experience cybersecurity incidents indicating failures of certified IT security suffer punitive market reactions that destroy firm value. The paper elaborates on the feasibility of market-based trust in the ITO context, and shows that it works in the context of cyber failures and IT insourcing. The paper concludes with a discussion of obstacles to widespread adoption of market-based trust by ITO players.