Insights blog.

In 2014, Cyber Insurance saw record growth. In fact, in a recent white paper from Advisen, their buyer penetration index showed a five-fold increase in insurance purchases from 2006 to 2013, demonstrating that many organizations have recognized the value in outsourcing corporate cyber risk. Naysayers, however, warn that this move does not make companies more secure and allows organizations to ignore the behaviors and issues that are creating security risks in the first place.

There is no denying that cyber security issues have captured headlines over the course of the year. From the highly public Heartbleed bug to major data breaches affecting some of the largest names in business, there has been increased focus on data security. As we have noted in previous posts, in the wake of these events and in the face of new threats, cyber insurance has emerged as a viable option to transfer the risk of financial losses related to data loss. In just the past week a White House official went as far as to say that cyber insurance will be standard for businesses by 2020, just as property or liability insurance is now. But as the cyber insurance market continues to grow, how will large scale breaches affect the industry?

Last week Stephen Boyer, CTO and Co-Founder of Bitsight, and Oliver Brew, VP of Professional, Privacy and Technology Liability at Liberty International Underwriters, hosted a webinar titled, "Security Ratings: A Big Data Approach to Measuring and Mitigating Security Risk". During this webinar, they discussed the challenges to measuring security risk and how Security Ratings can give businesses the tools to proactively identify and mitigate risk.