Cyber Insurance – Mind The Gap

In 2015 the Lloyds market wrote £322m worth of cyber policies. In 2016 this is expected to rise to £500m. Yet take up of cyber insurance in the UK is lagging far behind that of the US; despite numerous warnings from GCHQ about the threat posed to British businesses by cyber-attacks.

So where to start? If you are a CEO, Board member or CIO considering purchasing cyber insurance, here are a few useful pointers:

• Value at risk – have you worked through a plausible worst case scenario for data loss? What is the potential financial impact? By the time you have added up notification costs, business interruption costs, the cost of IT forensics, remediation work, contractual claims, regulatory penalties and PR costs the figures can start to look quite scary, that is before you even start to think about the reputational damage that might accrue. You don't have to be a large business to have a lot of value at risk.