A new hypothetical report jointly compiled by Lloyd’s of London and AON says that a global cyber attack spread via phishing emails could fetch a loss ranging from $85 billion to $193 billion USD and this is said to put a strain on the insurance market in near future.
Technical speaking, when a cyber attack takes place it generally leads to business interruption, cyber extortion, and incident response costs. This will ultimately lead to insurance claims which will surely show influence on the premium amounts quoted to businesses in future.
God forbid, if a cyber attack on a global level takes place on businesses, Aon estimates that the total claims provided by the insurance sector will be in the range between $10 billion and $27 billion- which strictly depends on the policy limits ranging between $500,000 to $200,000.
So, those companies(like those into healthcare, manufacturing, banking, and retail) which go for under insurance will put their digital assets at risk and that is evident as the report quotes that 35% of companies operating in the world are functioning without an insurance cover and 7% of them are those operating in multiple regions of the world.
The security report compiled by the Lloyds says that the economies of the United States and Europe will be the only & most suffering regional economies from a global cyber attack. And that’s due to the fact that they are services dominated and the attack will impeach them to direct financial loss.
Governments are already doing their part in creating awareness on what cyber attacks launched on a global note could yield in losses. For instance, Britain’s National Cyber Security Center(NCSC) announced last Friday that it has launched a probe on the large scale hijacking campaign which took place on Domain Name Systems (DNS).
The cyber security wing of GCHQ has also alerted the world that nations like China, Iraq, Russia and North Korea- all labeled as big adversaries to developed western nations are in plan to launch a cyber attack on a worldwide note in this year. FBI has also endorsed this news and added to the statement that the attack will be in the form of phishing, cryptomining, and ransomware.
So, companies should start taking cyber security on a serious note from now on and start allotting a budget to gain resources to strengthen their cyber defenses. Also, as a precautionary measure, it is better for them to insure their digital assets with a cyber cover. Otherwise, it could prove fatal to their future business operations on an overall note.
