Holding tanks are seen in an aerial photograph at Colonial Pipeline's Dorsey Junction Station in Woodbine, Maryland, U.S. May 10, 2021. REUTERS/Drone BaseU.S. energy companies are scrambling to buy more cyber insurance after this month’s attack on Colonial Pipeline disrupted the U.S. fuel supply, but they can expect to pay more as cyber insurers plan to hike rates following a slew of ransomware attacks.
Only about half of the nation's pipeline companies currently buy cyber insurance even though ransomware attacks have become more frequent, according to Nick Economidis, vice president of cyber liability at insurer Crum & Forster. "Before the attack, the energy sector had some of the lowest interest in purchasing cyber insurance of all industries, but in the past two weeks, now they're very interested," Dagostino said.
To date, many companies have not bought cyber insurance because of high premiums and difficulties in quantifying the costs from incidents, according to"A lot of operators have not done the business impact assessments that banks and big retailers do to determine overall costs of being down for a certain period of time," said Dagostino.of only about $15 million, according to one media report. Last year, the company had net income of $420 million on $1.
Companies that have cyber insurance often retain the initial loss that can range from $500,000 to $10 million, depending on the policy. Then the insurance kicks in to cover the ransom, which in Colonial's case was $4.4 million, its chief executive told the Wall Street Journal.
Then we know who done it. Who is selling Cyber insurance. Is there a dutchman involved? Amsterdam is supposed to be the new EUROPEAN financial capital? Post brexit?
Or they could try hiring security professionals to secure their system and prevent this from happening in the first place. Spending on prevention is always better than spending huge on disaster recovery.
Hackers will sort what companies have the highest insurance, knowing they will pay out. This isn't the answer. Fix our failing infrastructure.
good luck
Wrong answer. They need an airgap. Take the system off the internet completely.