Businesses Slow to Boost Cyber Insurance Coverage Despite Risks

While a majority of U.S. finance executives now see high-profile cyber-breaches as a major risk, many still have inadequate cyber insurance coverage, a new survey found.

That finding comes from the Association for Financial Professionals’ survey of executives in corporate treasury, finance and banking at its annual conference in Washington, D.C. Results are based on the 970 responses generated by the survey.

The survey found:

• About 32 percent of respondents rated cyber risks as highest risk on a five-point scale. Another 28 percent slapped a “very high” label on those risks.
• A whopping 31 percent of respondents don’t carry any cyber insurance.
• Approximately 6 percent of companies previously uninsured for cyber risk picked up the coverage in the past year, and 15 percent increased existing coverage in the past 12 months.
• The contradiction between acknowledging a cyber risk problem and taking steps to address it is in play even as many of these executives admitted that cyber breaches could harm financial institutions and cause loss of faith in electronic payments technology.
• A solid minority of respondents also agreed that high-profile breaches of cloud services and personal devices, successful large-scale attacks by foreign entities and high-profile data breaches at retailers would greatly harm business activity.
• While respondents admitted major concerns about the economic impact cyber breaches could cause, 21 percent had not updated their crisis response or business continuity plans in the past 12 months. About 12 percent said they had no plans to update either option, AFP noted.

Topics Cyber