Big Companies Respond in Big Way to Cyber Risks

The takeup rate for cyber insurance is on the rise, but there are discrepancies between large and small companies’ purchasing preferences, according to a recent report.

The percentage of firms that purchase cyber insurance, via either stand-alone policies or endorsements, has increased 40 percentage points since 2011, including a 10-percentage-point uptick from 2017 alone, which is the largest year-over-year increase since the survey started, according to the eighth annual Information Security and Cyber Risk Management report released by an insurance group and a provider of data and technology solutions.

The survey of 313 officials, most of whom classified themselves as either chief risk managers/heads of a risk management department or a member of the risk management department, revealed that nearly twice as many large companies, which are defined as firms with more than $1 billion in revenue, made changes to their cyber security controls because of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. That is in comparison to middle market companies, defined as firms with less than a billion in revenue.

Only 40 percent of respondents overall said they had made changes to cyber security controls as a result of the GDPR.

Large companies also expressed more concern about business continuity risks than their middle market counterparts, according to the survey.

Among other survey results, twice as many middle market companies as large companies said supply chain risks had not affected their vendor management controls.

Source: Business Insurance