The cyber threat landscape over the last year has proven to be the most volatile yet in the history of the market, for the simple reason that the risk is too low and the profitability too high for threat actors. As a result, cyber insurers have had to evolve just as quickly to prevent and respond, leading to the following predictions for the year ahead. Check out our cyber trends 2022 below:
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Cyber trends #1- Zero-day ransomware attacks
Zero-day ransomware attacks will dominate the headlines, whereby criminals exploit software vulnerabilities before any patches are available to avoid them by businesses. This means that the only way to prevent an attack is through improved security controls in advance.
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Cyber trends #2 - Fear of a systemic risk event
Third party dependencies will continue to be a weak link for cyber risk. Managed service providers and cloud computing providers will continue to be lucrative targets for cybercriminals, with the fear of the next large-scale systemic risk event – where a single event has the potential to impact thousands of businesses – at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
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Cyber trends #3 - Cyber insurance = risk management service
Cyber insurance will predominantly become a proactive risk management service. Insurers will seek to prevent claims before they happen and will pivot to conducting scans to detect vulnerabilities as an added service through mobile app technology.
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Cyber trends #4 - Increased regulatory and governmental scrutiny
Increased scrutiny by both regulators and government advisory groups with a focus on improving security standards for businesses to prevent attacks. Equally, government bodies will seek to ensure there is more transparency around when businesses decide to pay ransom demands through legislation.
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Cyber trends #5 - Targeting manufacturers and distributors
Criminals will continue to target businesses in industries where standards for security have historically been weak. Manufacturers and distributors have been particularly impacted in the last year given dependencies on automation, robotics, and the supply chain as entryways in their networks.
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Cyber trends #6 - Continual hardening of the market
As a result, the cyber market is expected to continue to harden with more corrective action taken on rates to ensure the coverage can be maintained as broadly as it has been. Cyber will move from ‘hard to sell’ to ‘hard to buy’ based on limited available capacity, and undoubtedly become where a company’s largest exposure now lies.
So, that's what we think will be the most prominent trends hitting the cyber insurance market throughout 2022, but what do you think?
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