More Canadian firms are buying cyber insurance than in the US, UK or Scandinavia - but confusion around how the coverage is priced and what it offers is preventing the market from growing at a more rapid pace, according to a FICO survey.

In Canada, 36% of security executives said their company had no cyber insurance coverage - that number went up to 50% south of the border in the US and stood at 40% globally.

However, Kevin Deveau, vice president and managing director of FICO Canada, pointed out that confusion still hangs over the product – primarily due to a lack of standardization in the cyber insurance market and the fact that there isn’t an intuitive way to compare policies. The level of confusion is clear among Canadians, with a resounding 80% saying risk pricing should be more transparent. 

Deveau said FICO wanted to rationalize the cyber insurance market by introducing a cyber security score not unlike a credit score.

Still cyber insurance is something that Canadians need to buy into quickly according to the FICO survey of 350 securities executives in Canada, supplemented by parallel studies in other countries. That’s because 68% of Canadian firms saw a rise in attempted data breaches during the period – that’s more than any other nation polled. However, it’s unclear if that spike in attempted breaches is actually just a result of the Digital Privacy Act’s mandatory reporting implementation or not.


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