Moore's law notes that in the history of computer hardware, computing power doubles about every two years, which is why our digital lives have become equally exhilarating and exhausting in recent years. We scarcely have enough time to integrate fully into our lives the latest social media platform, music format or data management before a fresh innovation renders it all obsolete, and we are once again left to figure out how and where we fit into the world's new digital reality.

From this was born the cyber-liability insurance market, coverage that seems to serve a simple enough need: to insure against the various kinds of loss that might arise from the use of the Internet. At one point, that meant hacking, or virus infection or straight-up electronic theft of valuable information, financial data or money. But in the relatively short time that cyber-liability has been around, the environment it is meant for has changed radically and continues to do so. In fact, one might say that cyber-liability is trapped in the same predicament that any defensive measure is in during an arms race: perpetually struggling to keep up with that against which it is meant to defend.

A good example of this is a recent scandal at Bloomberg, the news media giant perhaps best known for the computer terminals it rents out for $20,000 a year. The terminals have become must-have tech for anybody on Wall Street, anybody who follows Wall Street closely (such as financial journalists) and anybody close enough to Wall Street to want to look cool and have an expensive tchotchke in their office. The terminals provide plenty of detailed markets info, as well as a messaging system that lets Wall Streeters ping each other and see who among them are online or offline at any given moment.