The growing threat from hackers and computer viruses will trigger a boom in cyber crime insurance, according to one insurer.

Tryg, Denmark’s largest insurer, said it expects 90% of its corporate customers to buy cyber crime coverage within five years. It’s already sold 5,000 cyber crime policies since the beginning of the year, when it launched a product to help businesses restore data and get systems running again after a cyber attack.

“There are no corporate clients today that don’t have insurance on their buildings or cars, but I think that within a very few years it will be just as evident that you should insure against cyber crime,” Tryg chief executive Morten Hubbe told Reuters.

According to Tryg, there was a spike in demand for cyber insurance following the “Wannacry” ransomware attack, which affected more than 300,000 computers in May. Hubbe told Reuters that he projected around 50% of Tryg’s corporate clients would buy cyber insurance by 2020, and that figure would reach 90% “a couple of years” after that.

“The biggest risk to us is that significantly more customers get hit than we believe, and that gives us a huge economic loss,” he told Reuters.


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