Cyber Attacks: Insurers Seeking To Develop Risk Management Standards

In a recent FT article, Janet Williams, the lead on cybercrime initiatives for the Association of Chief Police Officers, commented that insurers should agree only to provide cover against cyber attacks to companies that meet a minimum cyber defence Kitemark standard.

Cyber crime attacks have now been upgraded to a "tier one" national security threat. Government statistics have estimated that cyber attacks cost businesses approximately £21bn a year and high profile commercial victims of cybercrime include Sony and Lockheed Martin, the military supplier. More recently, the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was subjected to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which overloads a site with data requests with the aim of making it inaccessible to users.