> The free market crowd would argue that the surviving companies will bake in the right security if consumers demand it. No, the free market crowd would recogn

> The free market crowd would argue that the surviving companies will bake in the right security if consumers demand it. No, the free market crowd would recognize the cost of poor security for what it is, an externality. That fits into basic economic theory as something that the market won't naturally correct. No one will demand security if they're not the ones suffering from the lack of it. Governments need to figure out some way to price in the externality. A good for instance would be to allow companies that don't take reasonable security measures to be held accountable for all damages caused, not just the portion attributable to their negligence. If Dyn had grounds to sue any device maker who, say, has a default password that isn't required to be changed during initialization before the device connects to the internet, then it would start to change things. After enough of the fly-by-night device makers are hit with large judgments, it will start to become common practice to put every new device through security audits before introducing them into the market. Those reviews and the followup development will take time and cost money which will add to the final cost of the device, but make them safer.