This course examines cybersecurity through an economic lens, drawing on the World Bank's 2024 research on Cybersecurity Economics for Emerging Markets. It explores why digital infrastructure creates economic exposure, how threats are distributed across income groups, what cyber incidents truly cost, why markets systematically underprovide security, and what policy interventions can correct these failures.
Across five modules, learners develop the framework to quantify cyber risk, identify market failures, and design proportionate policy responses suited to emerging-market resource constraints. The course closes with an integrated case study applying all five modules to a fictional national cybersecurity incident.
Learning Outcomes: Explain how digital infrastructure creates economic vulnerability using concepts including externalities and public goods. Describe the regional distribution of cyber threats and why upper-middle-income countries face disproportionate exposure. Quantify direct and indirect incident costs using the iceberg model. Identify the four market failures suppressing private cybersecurity investment. Evaluate national cybersecurity policy proposals using the five-step policy cycle. Apply economic reasoning to real-world cases including the Costa Rica 2022 ransomware incident.
Source: Vergara Cobos, Estefania. 2024. Cybersecurity Economics for Emerging Markets. World Bank, Washington, DC. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO.