Half of SMEs lack any cyber insurance, survey finds

Half of the UK’s SMEs lack any kind of cyber insurance, addording to an insurer survey.

Most small and medium-sized enterprises (57%) lack any cyber insurance, despite nearly two-thirds (63%) having experienced potentially dangerous incidents according to Under Attack and Unprepared: Argo Group Cyber Insurance Survey 2017.

The survey also found that less than half of the respondents were confident in their capacity to deal with cyber incidents.

This comes just months after the US suffered one of its biggest data breaches in history, where hackers gained access to 143 million personal records and caused at least $4bn of loss in stock value for the company involved.

Even after this, the survey found that only 27% of SMEs are “likely” or “very likely” to purchase cyber insurance, but six in 10 do not believe their current cybersecurity is adequate.

The reasons behind their hesitancy into buying insurance was that they believe their in-house security is adequate (42 percent), they believe insurance is too expensive (35%), and/or there is a lack of interest in cyber insurance from their senior management or board of directors (32%).

“Every company is vulnerable to cyber incidents, but most lack cyber insurance,” says Simon White, senior vice president and group head of cyber at Argo.

“If we learned anything from last holiday season and throughout 2017, it’s that cyber vulnerabilities are a direct threat to American businesses of all sizes. Cyber incidents have the potential to destroy an entire business in a single event. Cyber insurance is the best tool to prevent this kind of damage from happening.””

150 brokers in both the U.K. and U.S. were surveyed.