UK Companies Failing To Cope With The Threat Of Cyber Attacks

In today’s world, it’s especially important to make sure that your business is protected and insured against any potential threats, and with cyber attacks causing an increasing headache for firms and with GDPR-related penalties having increased, the need to correctly insure your business has never been more pressing.

That makes recent news that companies in the United Kingdom are not responding to the threat of cyber threats, and aren’t effectively covered in the case of an attack, all the more alarming. NTT Security are reporting that 66% of UK business are not insured in the event of a breach of information security or data loss, with senior executives reportedly unaware if their organisation has ample protection for such instances. Such statistics are especially concerning when compared to the 81% of those executives questioned who concurred with the need to protect against security breaches without knowing if their business was covered in such an eventuality.

The report also delves further into the impacts of an attack, revealing that UK businesses pay an average of £1m to deal with the aftermath of a breach.

“With estimated annual losses from cybercrime now topping $400bn (£291bn) according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, you would hope more organisations would be beating a path to insurers’ doors,” offered Kai Grunwitz, senior vice-president of NTT Security. “But while the insurance sector is certainly seeing growth in the number of policies being taken out to cover such losses, it’s an issue that many senior decision makers are not on top of.”

Other findings from the report include:

• UK businesses perform poorly against the United States and Singapore when insuring against both information security breaches and data loss
• The UK outperformed both the Benelux nations (Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium) and the Nordic nations
• 70 firms now offer cyber insurance, twice the amount when the same count was conducted two years ago
• Allianz are predicting that global cyber insurance premiums will increase to $20bn by 2025, a startling increase from its current $3/4bn level

If your firm is unhappy about its coverage or strategy for coping with data loss and security breaches, please contact us to discuss your cyber insurance options.