Directors in the Firing Line: Responding to Cyber Threats

It is hard to identify any company that is immune to cyber crime in today’s interconnected digital world. First lines of technological defence are no longer impenetrable and directors are now being held directly accountable when the businesses they govern experience a cyber security event.

Data breaches affect millions of records a year: data or network sabotage, virus and Trojan infection, computer fraud and laptop theft, incidents of denial of service and network scanning are ever increasing and it is unlikely the underlying trends will improve. According to the 2014 report from a research center dedicated to privacy, data protection and information security policy, the Ponemon Institute, 2014 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis, the mean annualised cost of cyber crimes for 257 benchmarked organisations was US$7.6 million per year, with the cost ranging from US$500,000 to US$61 million per company each year. As such, insurance coverage for cyber risks should be a significant and growing concern for companies.

Read more about directors and officers' risks in this field in our latest report.