“The Internet of Things is a perfect example. There’s about six or seven billion devices connected to the internet now. That number could go up to 20 or even 50 billion devices in the next three to five years, so more connectivity means more opportunities to do denial-of-service attacks, more vectors into your network, more opportunities to crypt those devices to make money,” he said.
Trainor warned there was currently a lack of insurance premiums being taken to cover for the estimated losses from these cyber-attacks.
Cyber Insurance- ripe for disruption?
“I’m not sure six trillion is the real number, but I do know the insurance premiums that are coming in, which is about $3 billion annually on cyber.
“So, whether it’s $445 billion or six trillion, there’s only three billion in capital – that’s a significant gap. Essentially, companies are absorbing the losses for this,” said Trainor"
Strategic Risk 16th October 2017
“If cyber security’s very complicated, cyber insurance is equally complicated. The past is less indicative of the future in cyber. We don’t have 350 years of actuarial data to underwrite cyber risk – the threat evolves. “Ransomware is a perfect example of how the threat has evolved over the last three years. It went from getting paid from a credit card or PayPal to now having to do the transaction entirely on Tor, which is an anonymised browser, and pay via a virtual currency,” added Trainor.