Lloyds says cyber attack cost could be as much as worst natural disasters

Lloyds, a British retail, and commercial banking firm have warned that a serious cyber attack could cost the global economy a $120 billion loss- much worse than the loss incurred by natural disasters likes Katrina and Sandy.

Reacting after the Wannacry and NotPetya Ransomware attack, the London based financial services provider recently released a 56-page report which says that the threat posed by such global attacks will surge 100 times in the next decade putting all businesses and governments at risk.

Quoting a most likely scenario, Lloyd’s said that some state funded actors could maliciously hack a cloud services provider with an estimated loss of $53 billion. As this estimate is seen on an average, uncertainty looms around the calculations, as the losses incurred by cyber attacks are often realized to be much higher than predicted.

Thus, Lloyd’s wants to conclude that future cyber attacks could wreak havoc taking the losses to $120 billion- more than what Hurricane Katrina savaged in the year 2005.

Inga Beale, CEO of Lloyds said that the report helps in giving a real sense of the scale of damage a cyber attack could cause to the global economy in near future or the next decade. Beale added that just like some of the worst natural catastrophes, events related to cyber attacks can also severely impact businesses and economies.

So, Beale feels that underwriters should from now on be careful in quoting premiums for cyber attacks. He also felt that the industry should also start focusing on issues which it neglected all these days. 

Like to cover cyber attacks made on operating systems or not and to include only certain business verticals into the threat radar.

Metamorphically speaking, cyber insurance is a relatively new type of insurance that has emerged in the last few years and Lloyd’s accounts for about a quarter of global premiums.

Though, the said insurance type has been existing from nearly a decade exists, not many companies have so far shown interest in embracing it for some reason or the other.

But as the threat landscape has increased and is being witnessed nowadays, let’s hope that it helps in changing the mindset of companies which otherwise chose not to consider cyber insurance cover for their business till date.