Cyber

Managing cyber risks

As cyber threats are unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future, organisations must allocate sufficient resources to training their people and enhancing cyber security processes, policies and technology. Furthermore, governments and regulators need to set up the right framework for economies and societies to become more resilient against cyber threats.

Insurers can support policyholders with tailored risk management services and by encouraging good risk management practices.

Swiss Re is able to respond quickly to developments in the cyber insurance space, for example, by adjusting underwriting guidelines or costing parameters to account for changes in the risk landscape.

Given the importance of this risk class, Swiss Re has a dedicated Cyber Centre of Competence responsible for modelling and overseeing cyber risks.

The centre’s team uses two types of risk models: Probabilistic models determine the expected frequencies with which certain levels of loss might hit our portfolio. Deterministic tools, our second approach, are scenario-based, assessing the potential impact of single large events, such as major cyber attacks threatening society at large.

This team is Swiss Re’s guardian for underwriting cyber risks, overseeing steering capacity, costing, governing certain exclusions and ensuring a thorough understanding of accumulation in the portfolio. They also identify and ring-fence “silent cyber” risks, ensuring that cyber-induced losses in the traditional lines of business are kept under control.

To further ensure a solid data-led underwriting, the Cyber Centre of Competence is developing the “Cyber Data Ocean”, a proprietary repository for information on cyber incidents, risk drivers and cyber threat intelligence.