Demand for cyber attacks insurance cover on rise

Demand for purchasing insurance policy against online cyber attack is rising rapidly. Recently Cosmos Co-operative Bank, had a sizeable online fraud and caught the bank unaware.  Banks are getting them insured to safeguard against the risk of Cyber attacks. It has been learnt that on an average private sector banks are incurring $10-50 million, and one public sector bank bought a cover of $100 million. In the last year, more than 3,000 online banking frauds were reported. According to industry estimates, one cyber attack happens every 10 minutes with most cybercrimes reported in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. “Indian companies are increasingly seen opting for cyber insurance to get aspects like forensic costs, cyber extortion costs and other first-party expenses covered,” said Manoj Kumar AS, senior vice-president, Global Insurance Brokers. “There has been a growth in the number of policies by almost 25% cumulatively over the past four years and we expect this figure to go up by another 30% post implementation of Personal Data Protection Bill.” The obligations of the proposed bill by Justice BN Srikrishna will lead to the data liability cover with companies taking adequate cyber risk cover and enhancing the existing ones, experts feel. The ministry of information technology recently released the Personal Data protection Bill of 2018 in line with the European Union’s GDPR. “The bill has come at the time of major international events such as the recent breach by a British consultancy firm, the WannaCry and Petya attacks, banking data theft and at the advent of strong international privacy laws,” said Kumar.