European businesses not fully grasping cyber insurance

Cyber threats are growing in Europe, with the UK alone registering one fraud attempt on a card or account every 15 seconds, for over 1 million in the first half of 2016. After the European Union announced plans to launch the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, business are more engaged in the security crisis, especially when consumer data is involved.

Lloyds interviewed some 346 c-level executives from top European businesses about their experience with data breaches, a top priority in their strategy. Companies are extremely concerned about safeguarding confidential data about patents and financial information, and their clients” private information.

Some 92 percent of respondents suffered breaches in the past five years, found the survey, and 42 percent worry they might get hacked again. Data is one of their most important assets, turning them into the perfect target for criminals. Once the data is stolen, it is sold to the highest bidder.

The reasons behind data breaches are many, starting from just wanting to prove something through petty crime to economic and political issues and even cyber espionage, affecting companies in key industries or strategic areas. This is probably why companies tend to be more concerned with external threats such as malware infection, phishing, whaling and ransomware, than on internal threats such as human error or rogue employees.

The Lloyds cyber insurance survey reveals as many as 57 percent of respondents are either misinformed or don”t even know about the regulation to take effect in two years. Worse, as many as 73 percent know little about cyber insurance while 50 percent never heard of it.

This raises questions concerning their strategic capabilities and actual measures to deal with security breaches and consumer data theft, not to mention the financial and legal issues to arise if not compliant with GDPR.