Cyber-insurance uptake on the rise

A new survey suggests that more British businesses are protecting themselves against the risk of online attacks. According to the poll, carried out by Ovum for insurance industry analyst Fico, only 10% of UK companies now say they are uninsured for cyber-crime.

Ovum says the figure is a big improvement on last year, when the same survey found that 31% of British businesses were uninsured. It’s also considerably better than the average for international rivals.

Across the UK, US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, India, Finland, Norway, Sweden and South Africa, an average of 24% of companies said they were not insured against cyber-attacks.

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But there is still progress to be made, says Insurance Business. While the businesses do have some cover against cyber-crime, many do not have comprehensive insurance. In fact, says the magazine, “most businesses described their cyber insurance as not being based on an accurate assessment of their firm’s individual risk”.

Maxine Holt, research director at Ovum, said: “Although UK organisations perform well in terms of the uptake of cyber insurance, the fact that fewer than 40% have comprehensive insurance demonstrates there is still some way to go for these firms to have a broad view of their security posture and how to present it for insurance.

“It could also show that these companies have a current security posture that insurers are not prepared to cover comprehensively.”

But Holt welcomed the survey result as a positive step, and evidence that UK companies are taking online threats seriously.

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