More US Professionals Look to Cyber Insurance

The huge publicity and new information on the impact of a cyberattack has persuaded organisations to place greater emphasis on developing risk management strategies to proactively address these exposures, reports the Risk Management Society (RIMS).

US-based RIMS has conducted its first cyber survey to explore strategies implemented by financial and risk professionals including insurance investments, exposures, cybersecurity ownership, government involvement, as well as identification methods and response procedures.

Key findings from RIMS Cyber Survey 2015 include:

• Fifty-one per cent of respondents purchase stand-alone cyber insurance policies.
• Fifty-eight per cent of those with cyber insurance policies carry less than US$20m in cyber coverage, while 49% of those are paying over US$100,000 in premium.
• Seventy-four per cent of those without cyber coverage are considering procuring coverage in the next 12-24 months.
• Seventy-seven per cent of respondents credit enterprise risk management (ERM) for identifying cyber risk.
• The top three first party exposures reported are: Reputational harm (79%); Business interruption (78%); and Data breach response and notification (73%).

“It seems like every day risk professionals are confronted by new cyber-attacks and forced to take immediate action to protect their organisations before it is too late,” said RIMS president Rick Roberts.

“The key to successfully mitigating the impact of a cyber-breach – or even preventing one in the first place – is knowledge. RIMS Cyber Survey offers the global risk management community valuable insight, showing how organisations are trying to stay ahead of this top concern.”

The survey features input from 284 of RIMS’ professional members in the US. The majority of the survey respondents represented organisations with excess of US$1bn in revenue (58%), from a wide range of industries.

The full is survey is available to both RIMS members and non-members in RIMS Risk Knowledge library: www.RIMS.org/Riskknowledge.