When a few high-profile hacking incidents hit household-name firms like Target and Home Depot in 2014 and 2015, some in the insurance industry – and more than a few in public life– said that cyber risk required an expensive new government solution.

The threat of a major Internet outage caused by hackers, they said, was an “uninsurable” systemic risk that would impact all economic sectors at once and more-or-less required government protection in the form of a “backstop” that would pay high-end losses.