A survey conducted by Ovum on behalf of FICO Insurance claims that only 38% of firms in the United Kingdom have a cybersecurity insurance cover and rest of the 62% either have no coverage or doesn’t have a cover engrossing all risks.
This discovery was made in a survey based on numerous interviews with senior staff based in the security & IT sectors of companies which had more than 500 employee count.
FICO survey also identified that Telecommunication firms lag behind other industries regarding cybersecurity insurance, with 17% reporting they have no coverage. The study also found that the 5% of financial service firms were still disinterested in taking a cover due to various reasons.
“In the past couple of years, Cyber Insurance cover has become a must-have for UK firms”, said Steve Hadway, the general manager of FICO, Europe. But with this demand, an increased pressure on insurance companies is being observed to raise transparency and fairness around how premiums are set said Hadway.
Also, most businesses are in a viewpoint that if they increase their investment in Cybersecurity protection, they need not buy a policy. But in reality, it only brings down the premium to be paid to a certain extent and doesn’t isolate their IT assets from cyber threats forever.
A report compiled by Lloyd last year says that economic losses from a single cloud service disruption scenario could touch the $121 billion scale.
From May this year, UK has started to impose hefty fines in cases of data breach- as per the new General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR). Thus, in this scenarios, firms should at least rely on comprehensive insurance policies based on the sound analysis of the cyber risks associated with their individual firm.
CFC Underwriting sees the current trend in a different way. It says that the number of covered firms might be less for now, but in near future, the ‘fear factor’ of a costly cyber attack is said to drive most of the firms operating in the UK towards a cyber insurance cover.
