A new survey by British Telecom (BT) and KPMG revealed that majority of respondents still had no plan in place to deal with cyber-attacks.
The study, released last week, said only 22% of companies surveyed had “adequate” cyber insurance and response plans in place to deal with dangers in the online space. In contrast, 97% reported having experienced a cyber-attack, while 55% observed an increase in incidents.
BT Americas Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Jason Cook added that only 23% had comprehensive cyber insurance policies to cover the various exposures of operating data and online systems.
Cyber insurance policies typically cover loss and damage to digital assets, business interruption costs, direct financial losses from fraud or extortion attempts, specialist support provision forensics and investigation, and provision of reputation management services, KPMG Technical Director for Cyber Security David Ferbrache said.
Febrache added that policyholders also need to look for coverage related to issues arising from their business partners, such as “inability to meet contractual obligations.”
He further stressed that exposure could include specific areas, such as physical damage resulting from cyber-attacks on control systems similar to those used in the petroleum industry, and industrial manufacturing firms.
BT and KPMG surveyed 100 CISOs, Chief Information Officers and other IT executives from Fortune 500 companies in the US, UK, Singapore, India and Australia.
