Aon: Recent Cyber-Attacks Cause Surge in Cyber Insurance Policies

Due to a significant increase in high-profile data breaches in 2016, Aon claims to have brokered more cyber policies to Australian organizations in the first half of this year than it did in all of 2015. While the concept of cyber insurance is far more evolved in the United States, recent cyber events in Australia, such as an online census failure this month, have sparked recent interest in cyber protection. In fact, when cyber insurance emerged in Australia in 2013, Aon wrote just five policies throughout the year. In 2016, Aon has written 750 cyber policies and $5.25 million in premiums – a quarter of the Australian cyber insurance market, according to Aon’s Cyber Global Practice Leader Kevin Kalinich. While 70 percent of big businesses in the U.S. have some sort of cyber coverage in place, Kalinich said that only one in 10 major Australian businesses currently has cyber insurance. Kalinich predicts a 10-fold increase in premiums written in the next few years, particularly due to developing data breach notification requirements.