“We are reaching a tipping point where the majority of companies we surveyed now rank cyber security risks as high as other major insurable business risks,” said Michael Bruemmer, vice president at Experian Data Breach Resolution.
Among those companies that had an incident in the past 24 months, 70 percent of respondents said the experience increased their interest in these policies.
However, those costs are only a fraction of the average maximum financial exposure that the companies surveyed (breached or not) believe they could suffer because of cyber incidents. Respondents quantified the average potential maximum financial risk of a data breach at $163 million, with some projecting more than $500 million in damages.
For those firms that chose to go without coverage, 43 percent indicated that it is because of the cost and too many exclusions, restrictions and uninsurable risks.
“Going through the process of evaluating cyber insurance for their company, 62 percent of the people said that they felt like their company was in a better state of readiness because of going through the process of evaluating cyber insurance, which means that just the preparation and awareness help to improve their level of capability for an incident response for a data breach,” said Bruemmer.
Link: http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2013/08/07/301071.htm