CSR: The Ever Growing Risks Of The Cyber Space
According to the ‘Internet Security Threat Report’ by security solutions provider Symantec, India has surfaced as the third most vulnerable country in terms of risk of cyber threats, such as malware, spam and ransom ware. This is the standing in 2017, after moving up one place from the previous year.
There are eight metrics on which global threat rankings are based, namely, malware, spam, phishing, bots, network attacks, web attacks, ransom ware and crypto miners.
Corporate houses too are now discussing the issue of cyber threat and need for cyber insurance. Globally people witnessed ransom ware attacks like Petya, NotPetya and WannaCry.
“The thing about cyber risk is that it is evolving at a pace which most companies will find hard to keep up with; attacks are getting more sophisticated – from distributed denial of service attacks to ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks, the risk just keeps changing. The popularity of cryptocurrencies and their characteristics which prevent them from being traced back will only fuel further ransomware attacks in the future,” says Sanjay Datta, Chief Underwriting, Claims and Reinsurance – ICICI Lombard.
According to the report, in 2017, 5.09% of global threats detected were in India, slightly less than 5.11% in 2016. The U.S. (26.61%) was most prone to such attacks, followed by China (10.95%). India is most impacted by spam, bots, network attacks and ransom ware. Cyber criminals are adding “cryptojacking” to their methods as the ransom ware market is overcrowded, it added.
Datta brings to light the importance of cyber insurance and says, “The ever evolving nature of cyber risk poses an even bigger challenge for insurers, as they will have to work towards providing a wholesome risk mitigation product to customers. Such a product would help them not just cover the costs associated with a breach, but also help them improve their cyber security, provide vulnerability assessment and penetration testing services, and most importantly help educate their customer’s employees about threats such as phishing, ransomware and others – since humans are still the weakest link in cyber security.”
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