Intangic MGA has called for a new approach to managing nation-state cyber attacks that moves away from the focus on catastrophic ‘Cyber Armageddon’ toward the higher frequency events happening every day.
According to Intangic, outside of the individuals and entities on the frontline of cyber warfare today, the general perception of state-sponsored cyber adversaries’ tactics and activities is different from the reality.
“Specifically, the fear of a rare, catastrophic ‘Cyber Armageddon’ event that could happen runs contrary to the constant stealth attacks that are happening and puts corporations at risk of misallocating resources to effectively manage this dynamic threat,” explains the firm.
These comments stem from Intangic’s research paper – Reframing the Risk Calculus for Insurance of Nation-State Cyber Attacks – which was written by Intangic Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ryan Dodd, Vice-President of Marketing, Chris Nolan, and Founder and CEO of Souhegan Group Risk Solutions, Chris Nissen.
In the executive summary, Ryan Dodd said, “Understanding the frequency and severity of attacks and the tactics employed by nation-state adversaries can better protect against the more probable events that could cause economic damage to companies.
“If risk management programs put too much emphasis on planning for a rare Cyber Armageddon, we could end up creating a blind spot in containing losses from a much higher likelihood event risk: a less severe nation-state attack unintentionally causing a chain reaction of ‘cascading’ damages.”
Chris Nissen added, “It is true that cyber attacks have been growing at a tremendous pace for years now. States often used criminal proxies, but they are careful to limit their effects to stay below the threshold of warfare.”
He added, “If the cyber insurance market withdraws from insuring these everyday, low severity attacks, the overall infrastructure may become increasingly fragile and may actually inadvertently work to help better position a nation-state across a wide swath of the private sector, thus enabling a much larger, devastating attack in the future.”
