Lloyd’s of London said it has experienced rapid growth in the demand for insurance against cyber attacks.
Geoff White, underwriting manager for cyber, technology and media at Lloyd’s syndicate Barbican, said the market for cyber insurance had experienced a 50 per cent increase in insurance submissions during the first three months of the year, when compared to the same period in 2014.
“In general terms, we’re continuing to see new customers purchasing cyber insurance and existing customers purchasing higher limits following recent high profile attacks,” he said.
“In terms of our customers, approximately 70 per cent are first time purchasers. We’re also seeing customers in those sectors which were affected last year – and in particular in the retail sector – looking to buy higher limits.”
Greg Day, VP and CTO, EMEA at FireEye, said: “Not enough businesses recognise the significance of today’s cyber threats, but after a number of high profile breaches last year, it is no surprise that Lloyd’s is seeing an increase in new and existing customers purchasing cyber insurance.
Businesses have typically been very poor at qualifying the impact of a security incident and when measuring risk, most commonly look at costs in the near term. However, more and more, we’re seeing breaches have longer term implications and the growth of cyber insurance is going to allow much better qualification of short and long term financial impacts that will eventually lead to actuarial tables of risk and costs.”
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