Despite this, insurers must have adequate capacity to cover evolving cyber fraud
Personal lines cyber insurers are seeing “strong growth” across the market following a spate of online scams during the UK’s lockdown, as many people continue to work from home.
This is according to Guidewire Software’s European head of risk and analytics solutions Tom Harvey. He highlighted the firm’s Love, Hate, Indifference report, published last year, which revealed that 73% of people rated online identity as either ’quite’ or ’extremely’ important.
He told Insurance Times: “This concern is driving interest in policies designed to cover losses stemming from identify theft, social engineering, cyber bullying, systems compromise and financial fraud, and are often sold as an add on to a homeowners policy.
“The increasingly digital world that we now live in because of the Covid-19 pandemic is only exacerbating this situation.”
As an example, he cited the recent National Insurance card scam, which involves scammers targeting victims via an automated telephone call. The recipient is subject to an automated message - this states that their ’National Insurance number has been compromised’ and instructs them to press one on their handset to be connected to the caller to rectify this. Once connected, the victim is then pressured to part with personal information to receive a new National Insurance number.
Cyber insurance gap
Swiss Re’s 2020 SONAR report said 2020 was a watershed moment for cyber insurance.
Harvey warned: “As more and more people face up to the real-life consequences of cyber fraud, the industry needs to be prepared with adequate capacity to close the insurance gap.
“As with commercial cyber insurance, the more successful cyber personal lines insurers are not just providing financial protection. These insurers are also offering a range of tools designed to help individuals keep themselves safe online.
“We really see this as being crucial to the future success of the cyber market. As such, we have created a tool for insurers to offer to their customers, which allows individuals to monitor if their personal information has been stolen and to perform a comprehensive assessment of a device to ensure it is up to date and free from harmful software.”
Meanwhile, Greg Day, vice president and chief security officer, EMEA at Palo Alto Networks, explained that “cybercriminals sadly prey on such circumstances and, in times of desperate need, people are more susceptible to click-on scams. He also cited the National Insurance card scam.
“So much of cybercrime succeeds through psychology; where there’s an emotional need, cybercriminals will exploit it,” Day continued.
Covid-19 themed attacks
Palo Alto Networks tracked how criminals continually adapted their attacks throughout 2020, using Covid-19 themes to scam their victims.
Day said: “What’s helping these scams grow at such a rate is the availability of commodity malware that can allow hackers to perpetrate these attacks with greater ease and scale.
”Between February and March 2020, we observed a 569% increase in the average daily number of malicious coronavirus themed, newly registered website domains, setting the pace and scale for the threat facing organisations ever since.”
Day believes that spam filtering, proper system administration and maintaining up-to-date IT infrastrutures is vital to combat the potential cyber threat.
“It’s crucial that individuals and organisations properly maintain their IT infrastructure if they are to protect themselves against the majority of attacks and be covered should the worst happen,” he warned.
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