Demand for cyber insurance grows as volatility scares off some providers

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.cyberscoop.com/cyber-insurance-demand-cost-2019/

By Jeff Stone
CYBERSCOOP
July 29, 2019

There’s at least one part of the financial sector where hackers are good for 
business.

Direct cyber insurance premiums grew to $2 billion last year, up 26 percent 
since 2015, according to figures published July 25 by Moody’s Investors 
Service. That figure represents less than 1 percent of premium insurance 
revenue in the U.S., but it’s clear the increasing claims over the past three 
years are driven largely by concerns about data breaches, distributed 
denial-of-service attacks and, perhaps most notably, ransomware.

The problem, despite all the demand, is that some insurers are now re-thinking 
whether it’s in their best interest to keep offering the plans that help 
clients recover from devastating cyberattacks.

Swiss Re Americas, a reinsurer that primarily backs governments and other 
insurance companies, is reluctant to embrace the cyber insurance market because 
of unpredictable, and expensive, attacks like the 2017 NotPetya incident, which 
the White House said caused $10 billion in damages.

“Nobody saw this coming,” J. Eric Smith, president and CEO of Swiss Re 
Americas, said last week at the International Conference on Cybersecurity at 
Fordham University. NotPetya was enough for the $34 billion company to 
re-consider whether broadly offering cyber insurance was such a good idea.

[...]

--
Subscribe to InfoSec News
https://www.infosecnews.org/subscribe-to-infosec-news/
https://twitter.com/infosecnews_