Corporates Drive Demand For Cyberattack Insurance

Tryg, the Denmark-based insurer, is predicting 90 percent of corporate customers will spend the money to purchase cybercrime insurance during the course of the next five years.

According to a news report in Reuters citing Denmark’s largest insurer, Tryg said it has sold 5,000 cybercrime insurance policies since the beginning of the year, when it rolled out a product that helps companies restore data and get up and running after they have been hacked.

“There are no corporate clients today that don’t have insurance on their buildings or cars, but I think that within a very few years, it will be just as evident that you should insure against cybercrime,” chief executive Morten Hubbe said in an interview with Reuters. “The biggest risk to us is that significantly more customers get hit than we believe, and that it gives us a huge economic loss.”

The executive said that roughly 50 percent of its corporate customers would buy the protection by 2020, and that it will take only a couple of years to hit the 90 percent market.

The report noted that the insurance provider is looking to hook up with global reinsurers to share the risk when big firms lose money due to cyberattacks. Take Maersk Line, for one example: As Reuters pointed out it, the company got hit with a $2-300 million bill after hackers waged a cyberattack back in June.

The WannaCry ransomware attack from earlier this year increased interest in cyberattack insurance, noted the report. In that case the massive attack hit everything from the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to European auto makers, Chinese firms and any number of companies across other verticals, winnowing its way through disparate countries. Interpol had estimated that more than 100,000 organizations across 150 nations had been hit by the attack.