Former student of Erasmus School of Economics, Leeja van Bezouwen, has won The Google Award for her master thesis entitled 'Informed Trading prior to Cyber-Attacks. Do cyber-criminals exploit their knowledge of an upcoming cyber-attack by taking in positions in the financial market?’
Leeja, who obtained her MSc degree (specialisation financial economics) earlier this year, received the Google Award in The Hague, at the Leiden University College, on 1 November 2018. The jury was unanimous in its opinion that Leeja’s thesis was the best in the field of Internet & Economics. According to the jury the thesis is easy to read, is written in clear English, and the analysis is carried out with the most suitable models for this purpose.
The subject of the thesis of Leeja van Bezouwen is ‘cyber attacks’ by criminals who try to paralyse a company by disrupting information systems or even getting rid of them altogether. It could be that those criminals have relationships with people who trade in shares on the stock exchange, and that these criminals provide traders with inside information concerning an upcoming cyber attack. Those traders can then benefit improperly, and that is punishable.
On the base of an extensive empirical analysis in trading volumes of the financial securities of a large number of companies, with a focus on the trading days surrounding cyber attacks, Leeja shows that there seems no systematic trade advantage, although it sometimes happens just before a cyber attack that speculation increases.
The Internet Master Theses Awards are made available by Google, Brinkhof, SIDN Fonds and Greenhost together with Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen). The Google Award for the best master thesis in the field of Internet & Economics is one of the four prizes of 2,000 Euros for the best master theses on an internet-related topic.