Pre-breach services can help insurers prevent and prepare for cyberattacks.
It’s been a rough few years for cyber insurance. COVID caused disruptions in 2020 and 2021, bringing dramatic rate increases as insurers tried to correct the market after a spike in severe ransomware attacks.
“It went from a soft market to a hard market overnight,” said Todd Szalkowski, Associate Vice President, Cyber and Professional Liability, Nationwide. “Ransomware claims were going through the roof, BI claims were going up and carriers decided to make some market corrections.”
These trends have made cyber risk top-of-mind for insureds and for good reason: In 2020, average ransomware remediation costs reached $1.85 million, Cyber Security Media reported. Then 2021 came, and the average ransomware demand — not including eventual remediation costs — for cases handled by the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks rose by 144% to $2.2 million, an increase of 144% when compared to demand costs from the previous year. Remediation costs are higher than demand costs because they include the demand and additional things like business interruption…
