Small and medium-size enterprises are “disproportionately burdened” by cyber incidents and face higher sharply higher costs compared with larger organisations, according to Arceo.ai, a risk analytics provider for the cyber re/insurance market.
Analysis using Advisen Cyber Data Set found that the financial loss per incidents for SMEs was nearly 70 times higher than for larger peers.
Similarly, the average percentage of revenue that SMEs lost in each cyber incident was 3.4%, vs 0.05% for organisations of all sizes.
Arceo’s research defines SMEs as organisations with 1,000 or fewer employees.
“News coverage of massive data breaches can make cyber incidents seem as though their impact is mainly on large corporations,” said Ann Irvine, Head of Data Science at Arceo, who led the analysis.
“Our research showed that small and medium-size organizations are disproportionately burdened by cyber incidents,” she explained.
“Arceo believes this latest analysis emphasizes how important it is for businesses and the cyber insurance industry to gain a clear picture of cyber risk by using data, thoughtful and appropriate analytic techniques, as well as domain expertise to interpret the results.”
Arceo aims to help insurers and brokers better assess, underwrite, and manage cyber risks using its AI-powered cyber risk analytics and insurance platform.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Arceo is a privately funded company with additional offices in Chicago, Baltimore, and New York.
