A major insurance company is seriously re-thinking insuring for cyber-attacks. As cyber-attacks continue to grow, they will become “uninsurable,” the CEO of Europe’s Zurich Insurance said. The Financial Times broke the story earlier this week predicting that cyber-attacks could pose a larger threat to insurers than systemic issues like pandemics and climate change. “What will become uninsurable is going to be cyber,” Zurich said. “What if someone takes control of vital parts of our infrastructure, [what are] the consequences of that?” It’s not just a matter of data privacy, he added.[1] “First off, there must be a perception that this is not just data ... this is about civilization,” Zurich said. “These people can severely disrupt our lives.”[2]
Speculation says that there is a limit to what the private sector can absorb when it came to underwriting losses from cyber-attacks. A strong suggestion was offered saying the world’s governments need to “set up private-public schemes to handle systemic cyber risks that can’t be quantified, similar to those that exist in some jurisdictions for earthquakes or terror attacks.”
The Colonial Piepline ransomware attack is still in many people’s memories and still show signs of vulnerabilities that exist within the system. “The more you can get out in front to mitigate risks proactively, the more you can maybe not always prevent these incidents but prevent them from having the big material impact,” said the CEO of cybersecurity firm ActZero. He said that “almost everybody is grappling with this.”
PYMNTS.com research discovered that 85% of healthcare organizations reported seeing a growing number of cyber-attack risks over the last year (2022), with 58% of IT professionals saying their organizations were the target of ransomware attacks.
Hackers are attracted to virtual healthcare as it offers them a wealth of vulnerable data, with services often happening on a patient’s smartphone or laptop, according to the “Digital Identity Tracker,” a PYMNTS and Jumio collaboration.
Financial institutions (FIs) have fallen prey to cyber-attacks as well. The number of ransomware attacks reported by FIs in 2021 was double the number that occurred in 2020. The number jumped 108% from 602 in 2020 to 1,251 in 2021, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) reported in its latest Financial Trend Analysis report. The dollar amounts involved in those incidents climbed 68% from $527 million in 2020 to $886 million in 2021, the FinCEN report said.
Red Sky Alliance is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence Service organization. For questions, comments or assistance, please contact the office directly at 1-844-492-7225, or feedback@wapacklabs.com
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[1] https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2022/insurance-companies-wary-of-clients-tied-to-crypto-exchange-ftx/
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/63ea94fa-c6fc-449f-b2b8-ea29cc83637d
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