Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises to Increase Cyber Insurance Spending

Most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are planning to increase their cyber-insurance spending in the next couple of years,  according to a new industry report. 

The proliferation of ransomware attacks and other types of breaches has increased considerably in the past few years, forcing companies to take further steps to overcome the disaster presented by a successful cyberattack. 

According to the ESI Thoughtlab report, 65% of SMEs will increase cyber insurance spending in the next couple of years, which is actually more than the 58% that’s expected from larger companies. 

“The report also finds that 71 percent of SMEs have a cyber coverage limit lower than $1M and lower than total past or estimated future losses and expenses related to a cyberattack, “ reads the survey. “Further, cyber coverage limits varied across industries, with the report finding that life sciences, healthcare, retail/hospitality, and telecom are severely under-covered and show the biggest gap between limit and expected losses.” 

The idea of a cyberattack is no longer theoretical, especially for SMEs, which are targeted more often by ad actors. Since companies now look at the issue of a cyberattack or even a data breach as a matter of “when,” their future plans are changing accordingly. 

The report also unveiled that 45% of SMEs and large enterprises expect a data breach in the near future, and that some basic security measures such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) are greatly underused in SMEs. Only 18% of small companies implement such a solution, compared to the 43% in large enterprises. 

Furthermore, 55% of SMEs point to employee-owned end-user devices as the main risk to their companies over the next two years. 

Unfortunately, another recent study revealed that most small and medium-sized businesses felt that they are prepared for a cyberattack, and grossly underestimated the time it takes to recover from such an incident.