Cyber-Security and Risk
The insurance and reinsurance industry is going through the revolutionary change because many insurance companies have taken the initiative to leave behind the obsolete way of working and are adapting the innovation in technology at the global level.
Now everyone is agreeing with one simple idea that “Technology is penetrating in our daily lives and all young generation is tech savvy”. But the technology also brings its cons like increasing Cybercrimes.
Cybercrime is becoming the biggest problem among every industry. And for Insurance companies, it’s altogether new challenge for all. Cybercrime is not only affecting the consumers, but also the insurance firms.
In 2015, a major data breach at one Healthcare insurer that had comprised the private records of more than 78 million customers. We can say this is also one reason; Insurance companies should leave the obsolete work style and move with the time.
Recent studies also show that financial services organizations are being hit hard by the costs associated with these cyber threats, both old and new.
Now what are the major top threats facing by insurance companies from expanding technologies:
Ransomware and
Distributed Denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Cyber-criminals targeting insurers often have significant resources. This enables them to employ sophisticated attacks that combine advanced malware with other techniques such as social engineering
Ransomware continues to be the fastest-growing malware across all industries, criminal use of malicious software to encrypt files or hard drives of unsuspecting victims is so widespread that some countries started making laws to make recent ransomware attacks easier to prosecute.
While working with many insurance organizations we have found that they have invested a lot of money in security tools and processes that may be providing a false sense of security. As attackers learn to leverage encryption and other advanced attack techniques, traditional tools such as firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) are becoming less and less effective. As a result, many insurers may be misallocating their limited resources to address compliance-oriented, easily recognized threats while completely overlooking stealthy long-term threats that ultimately could be far more damaging.
What Insurance Companies can do?
The best defence against these emerging threats is twofold:
(1) A strong IT detection system, make sure your IT system is robust and is following best practices; the international and national guidelines are an excellent starting point,
and
(2) Employee awareness and training, train your employees to be on the lookout for red flags such as phishing emails, unsecured devices and websites that may contain malware; several organizations offer this service, both online and in-person.
Finally, make sure that your organization has an incident
response plan in place to effectively and efficiently respond to a cyber incident.
response plan in place to effectively and efficiently respond to a cyber incident.
The plan should identify key stakeholders, important contacts and law enforcement officials, both at the state and national levels.
CyberInsurify helps the organizations to reduce the Cyber Attacks Impacts. For more details, visit https://www.cyberinsurifylabs.com/CyberSecurityProgram/