Specialist insurer Beazley has released its 2018 Breach Briefing, which explores the evolving cyber risk landscape and highlights a number of growing threats to businesses around the world, further supporting the need for affordable and effective cyber risk insurance and reinsurance solutions.
Over the past year Beazley helped clients manage 2,615 data breach incidents, and has utilised and analysed the data in order to identify trends in the ever-expanding and constantly evolving cyber risk world.
The report finds that throughout 2017 breach incidents focused on the retail, hospitality, and healthcare sectors, and finds that cyber extortion, payroll diversion phishing attacks and fraudulent wire instruction are among the growing threats to businesses.
The chart below details 2017 breach incidents by cause, provided by the Beazley Breach Response (BBR) Service.
The full report explores individual breach types, highlighting evolving and more sophisticated types of events, and also shows the focus industry of each type of incident.
For example, 54% of payroll diversion phishing attacks in 2017 focused on the education industry, while 45% of ransomware incidents in 2017 focused on the healthcare sector.
Global Head of BBR Services, Katherine Keefe, said; “Criminals are intent on stealing data or extorting cash and their methods are becoming more sophisticated by the day. Wherever weaknesses exist – in systems, processes or simple human fallibility – every organization regardless of sector and size is vulnerable. We hope our Briefing will help organizations understand the risks more fully and ensure that they are doing all they can to protect themselves.”
Ultimately, the report concludes that the “cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving,” and looking further into 2018, Beazley believes that “cyber events that lead to business interruption are expected to increase.”
Beazley’s latest cyber report again underlines the need for adequate and affordable risk transfer solutions for cyber risks, something the industry has struggled to develop on a large, influential and really meaningful scale.
The cyber landscape will undoubtedly continue to evolve and advance at a rapid pace, and it’s down to insurers and reinsurers to develop products that take advantage of the huge cyber opportunity, while at the same time securing businesses against a very real and potentially very costly exposure.
