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(Reuters) - A co-ordinated global cyber attack, spread through
malicious email, could cause economic damages anywhere between
$85 billion and $193 billion, a hypothetical scenario developed
as a stress test for risk management showed.
Insurance claims after such an attack would range from business
interruption and cyber extortion to incident response costs, the
report jointly produced by insurance market Lloyd's of London
and Aon said on Tuesday.
Total claims paid by the insurance sector in this scenario is
estimated to be between $10 billion and $27 billion, based on
policy limits ranging from $500,000 to $200 million.
The stark difference between insured and economic loss estimates
highlights the extent of underinsurance, in case of such an
attack, the stress test showed. An attack could affect several
sectors globally, with the largest losses in retail, healthcare,
manufacturing and banking fields.
Regional economies that are more service dominated, especially
the United States and Europe, would suffer more and are
vulnerable to higher direct losses, the report said.
Cyber attacks have been in focus after a virus spread from
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-attack/new-computer-virus-spreads-from-ukraine-to-disrupt-world-business-idUSKBN19I1TD
Ukraine to wreak havoc around the globe in 2017, crippling
thousands of computers, disrupting ports from Mumbai to Los
Angeles and even halting production at a chocolate factory in
Australia.
Governments are increasingly warning against the risks private
businesses face from such attacks, both those carried out by
foreign governments and financially motivated criminals.
For example, Britain's National Cyber Security Centre announced
on Friday it was investigating a large-scale Domain Name System
(DNS) hijacking campaign that hit governments and commercial
organizations across the world.
In another recent incident, French engineering consultancy
Altran Technologies was the target of a cyber attack that hit
its operations in some European countries.
On a larger scale, personal data and documents from hundreds of
German politicians and public figures, including Chancellor
Angela Merkel, were published online in what appears to be one
of Germany's most far-reaching data breaches.
The report was also co-produced by MSIG, SCOR TransRe and Cyber
Risk Management (CyRiM).
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar in
Bengaluru; Editing by James Emmanuel)
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