2016 was definitely the year of cyber insurance . As large-scale attacks and disclosures of massive data-breaches were reoccurring along the year, we realized once again that allocating tremendous efforts and resources to your defense does not provide any guarantee you won’t experience an incident. emergence Cybersecurity Executives and professionals are gradually accepting that it is not a matter of if but a matter of when their organization will be hit by a cyber-attack. With this understanding, cyber insurance as an important tool in the multi-layer Cybersecurity defense approach and declare it is an essential part of their risk mitigation strategy. Security many businesses acknowledge https://d2aijf0p2rhda8.cloudfront.net/NEWS07_130319884_AR_-1_0.jpg Here are some of my personal predictions for how the cyber insurance market will develop in 2017: 2016 signaled a new path in the cybersecurity industry as few emerging startups started to offer a cyber insurance coverage of up to $1M per organization which will be fully covered with their defense solutions (e.g. and ). I expect this trend to intensify through 2017, and well established vendors will gradually follow to offer a bundle of protection plus insurance. An increasing number of security vendors will provide insurance guarantees. SentinelOne Cymmetria As cyber insurance is emerging and as many new insurance companies are entering the market (currently approximately offer stand-alone cyber insurance products), there is a race for the best cybersecurity talent to assess the risks and provide pre- and post breach services as monitoring, incident response, forensics, etc. In this atmosphere, insurers will acknowledge the revenues they can make from cyber insurance and adjacent security services to their clients, and will (and already do) with the cybersecurity professionals and tools through aggressive hiring and M&As. A high increase in the number of insurance companies which will start to offer cybersecurity services. 70 insurers expand their teams Ransomware is exploding across geographies, industries and all size of businesses. Following the massive DDoS attacks on and , the IoT world opens a new world of DDoS attacks which no load balancer can mitigate. I expect that cyber extortion will become the biggest problem for organizations and individuals, and will surpass data breaches as the main threat. Cyber extortion coverage will take the lead as the most demanded cyber insurance product. Krebs on Security Dyn There is a high demand for tools that will allow insurers an accurate, scalable and affordable risk assessments the entire, mainly manual, questionnaires based risk quantification methodology which is the common practice today. Adoption of advanced tools for risk assessment will increase. which will streamline There are high chances that few more US states will introduce regulations that support risk assessments on a regular basis internally, of third party vendors and enforce security policies on organization as suggested by the new for the big financial institutes which was released last September. New regulations will be introduced and will support the expansion of the cyber insurance market. NY proposal As awareness of cyber-attacks increases among small and medium sized business, they realize that cyber insurance is an essential security tool, particularly due to their limited cybersecurity resources. I expect to witness higher percentages of the SMB segment which will purchase cyber insurance coverage, leading to total market size increase as current estimation rely on low adoption rate in these segments. Penetration rate of cyber insurance among SMBs will be the driving force of the industry. As ransomware became a threat to any operating system and any device, that it will gradually become a serious problem for individuals as well, and hand by hand will lead cyber insurance companies to offer personal cyber insurance coverage. Few insurers will introduce personal cyber insurance coverage. it is forecasted Cyber insurance is here to stay and insurers, brokers, business and individuals will benefit as this market continues to evolve. Growth will be sustained mainly in the US market, tough it is high likely to expand worldwide, especially in the EU as will start to be effective. GDPR No matter which part of the IT security eco-system you fit into, you should explore the benefits cyber insurance can bring to you — revenues, financial hedge and cyber peace of mind. This article was originally published at . Infosecurity Magazine
