A recent survey revealed that almost half of participating companies had experienced some form of breach within a year.
The importance of business cyber insurance is becoming increasingly clear to companies suffering from digital attacks firsthand on a rising basis. A recent study into cyberattacks aimed at companies revealed that almost half had experienced some form of attack within the year prior to the study.
There were over 4,000 businesses participating in the survey, almost half of which had been attacked.
The research results were included in a report by Hiscox limited, an insurance and reinsurance company from Bermuda. The outcomes only underscored the importance business cyber insurance is playing in the commercial community in terms of offering protections against a peril that is increasingly commonplace.
This was the second Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report and was conducted by Forrester Research Inc., the research firm from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Forrester surveyed 4,103 different organizations. The businesses ranged from public to private, from small to large and spanned five different countries. Those countries included: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain.
Business cyber insurance became even more important to 45 percent of those companies in the last year.
That is because among the organizations that participated in this research, 45 percent said they were affected by at least one cyberattack within the year prior to the survey. Moreover, among those that were victims of cyberattacks, two out of every three were targeted at least twice, said the research report.
Among the targeted companies, the average cost associated with the data breach was $229,000, said the report. However, in some cases, there were considerably higher costs associated with the attacks. For instance, among the businesses that had a minimum of 1,000 employees, one attack’s cost was anywhere from $356,000 in Spain to $1.05 million for a similar business in the United States, explained the researchers in the survey results.
As a result, companies are acting quickly to try to mitigate the threat presented by digital attacks, said the report. Fifty nine percent of the respondents intended to boost their cyber security budgets in the year following the survey. Moreover, new technology “tops the shopping list despite this being the area where the bulk of firms appear best prepared,” read the report. Business cyber insurance was also identified by the report as an important step as tech defense was only one layer against attacks.
