The insurance and reinsurance industry loss from the Petya / NotPetya cyber attack continues to rise as a result of silent cyber exposure, with the loss now viewed as high as $2.7 billion by Property Claim Services (PCS), reports Artemis.
According to Tom Johansmeyer, Co-Head, PCS Strategy & Development at ISO, in an article on Artemis, the company’s informal insured loss estimate for Petya / NotPetya is currently at $2.7 billion.
The insurance and reinsurance industry loss from the cyber breach recently moved upwards in response to development in one of the larger underlying accounts, and the silent cyber exposures are reportedly large and developing rapidly.
Silent cyber can occur when other types of insurance or reinsurance products fail to explicitly exclude cyber risks, which could result in an accumulation of cyber losses within other policies. It’s something the market has been talking about for a long time, and which has finally happened with the Petya / NotPetya attack, which appears to be one of the first cyber events that could qualify as a true cyber catastrophe.
According to the Artemis article, part of the reason Petya / NotPetya is particularly worrisome is the component of the insured loss composed of silent cyber.
PCS estimates that more than $300 million is attributable to affirmative cyber, meaning the rest is effectively cyber risk that insurers and reinsurers may not have been prepared to assume, or simply weren’t aware they were taking on.
Four of the silent cyber losses have reportedly developed to at least $100 million, with one, so far, someway above the $1 billion mark. The individual losses may have more impact than the aggregate in this case, since the industry likely didn’t see them coming, the Artemis article explained.
