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New research from Arctic Wolf reveals changing attitudes to cyber insurance among Australian and New Zealand businesses.
Organisations in the ANZ region are starting to see cyber insurance as an essential part of their security toolkits.
Forty-three per cent of organisations in the region say they already have a cyber security insurance policy, while 57 per cent said they were considering getting one.
And of those that have one, 61 per cent have stand-alone cyber insurance policies.
The data comes from a survey conducted by cyber security firm Arctic Wolf. The company consulted 102 security and business executives in Australia and New Zealand. Their companies had at least 50 employees, with the majority polled employing between 100 and 499 employees.
Arctic Wolf also spoke to 112 insurance carriers and brokers from the United States to establish trends in the US market.
Of the companies that do have cyber insurance already, 2 per cent have had it for less than three months, but a clear majority – 39 per cent – have had a policy in place for more than two years.
Cyber security leaders are still not entirely confident with their insurance, however, with the mean confidence score out of 10 coming in at only 6.8.
“The coverage of insurance is not comprehensive enough, and many risks that I am concerned about are not included,” one Australian respondent told Arctic Wolf.
The cost of a cyber insurance policy continues to increase, though it is slowing at least. Sixty-one per cent of ANZ organisations have seen the cost of their policies increase, though 44 per cent said it was only by 10 per cent or less.
This scans with what US-based insurers are expecting. Twenty-six per cent of insurers expect their premiums to remain the same while half expect premiums to rise by no more than 10 per cent.
Thankfully, while costs are going up, so is the extent of coverage. Half of those surveyed said their policies had become more comprehensive over time, though 48 per cent said coverage had stayed the same, with 2 per cent reporting that their coverage had actually decreased.
“The main challenge we have encountered is that several of the policies we have evaluated are not comprehensive enough, or it may just happen to be that our risks are not covered by them,” a Kiwi respondent said.
The insurers themselves are also asking more of their customers. Forty-three per cent of those surveyed said their insurer had demanded more security requirements to maintain their coverage and 5 per cent of respondents said they had their coverage terminated.
In fact, improving an organisation’s security posture can often lead to savings on insurance, but simply getting insurance in place is not enough – the work must still be done to protect data. Sixty per cent of respondents said they focused on security training and awareness before getting their cyber insurance policy. Fifty-seven per cent worked on mitigating their exposure to risk, while 49 per cent hired additional IT or cyber security staff.
In New Zealand, though, finding the right policy can be challenging.
“There is a limited [number] of cyber insurance policies in our country, and so looking internationally, it’s been even that much more difficult because of the policies you hold in New Zealand and how they can occur with cyber insurance policies overseas as well as brokers overseas,” one New Zealand respondent said.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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