INSURING DOES NOT RELIEVE FROM PROTECTING

A survey based on a panel of risk-managers by Allianz in January 2015 revealed that, fortunately, cyber risk was one of their five major concerns. In the light of this very kind of studies, twenty of major international insurance companies started, a few years ago, to focus on insuring against cyber risk, after covering for a longer time marely IT risks.

In April 2015, AON group, one of the world’s biggest insurance brokers, conducted on a set of 1400 people (risk-managers, managers and CFO) another very insightful study. It shows that cyber risk ranks ninth in top ten companies’ risk ranking, including computer crime, piracy, viruses, malware, etc. AON group hence confirms that cyber risk has become a real concern from insurance’s point of view, even though the market is not completely mature: few long term data to assess damage costs, coverage perimeter hard to define, difficulty to aggregate a risk pool for reinsurer resale, etc. But the market will certainly evolve, for two reasons: first of all, the AON study shows that companies managers are not yet concerned by cyber risks but are rather focused on economical and financial ones (raw materials costs, economic downturn, technical failures). Furthermore, a part of the firm’s managers realized that a risk interconnection really existed, capable of harming the company’s image for instance, and turn up financially ravaging: Sony experienced it two years ago. No doubt that company managers, realizing the extent of their responsibilities, will head to their insurer to cover them. Just like what is happening in Great Britain (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-cyber-security-the-role-of-insurance), mandatory cyber insurance might one day become highly recommended, under the infamous precautionary principle. However, just as well as insurers require a 4 or 5 stars lock or burglarproof windows to be installed to insure a house against theft, they would ask a company to install a 4 or 5 stars protection for its information systems …