Nigeria’s increasing column inch renown for cyber attacks has gained international spot as a cyber breach centre, Leadway Assurance Company Limited, has stepped in offering corporates, small and medium scale firms and individuals protection against cyber attacks.
With the focus, “Understanding Cyber Insurance” at a virtual training workshop hosted by Leadway Assurance for insurance journalists, Mr. Uzodinma Ibe, of the casualty & liability underwriting, general insurance, braced for the gamut of cyber insurance underwriting in Nigeria. Ibe reckoned that the prevalence of remote working, increased online transaction and internet connectivity accelerated by COVID-19 pandemic; the need for protection against cyber attacks has become bourgeoning class of insurance and Nigeria has come on board cyber insurance underwriting.
Nigeria’s exposure to cyber attacks was made bare by a United Kingdom cybersecurity company reports of high traffic of information, transactions and data from Nigeria into digital space, this report stated that 36 per cent of Nigerian organizations had their systems compromised by cyber attacks in the last twelve months. Besides, the report also said that 64 per cent of cyberattacks in Nigeria exploited misconfigurations on the organization servers, which underscores Nigeria’s lead in global data leakage.
The exposure to cyber attacks has set Leadway as a quarterback reinforcing insurance as the maiden of commerce, with the company offering cyber insurance protection to first-party and third-party liability risk covers. Though relatively new and developing in the underwriting vaults, Ibe explains that the cyber offerings are designed to provide round the clock protection through streamlined, easy-to-interpret wordings and a service that goes far to provide specific needs beyond simple risk transfers.
Rolling the policy dice, he said: “First party which is the policyholder, the individual or that corporate entity that buys the insurance, such policy caters for private investigation expenses where there is some form of data compromise or breach to reach to reach out to different customers to inform them of the breach. Third-party liability coverage indemnify companies for losses to others caused, for example, by errors and omissions, failure to safeguard data, or defamation; and other benefits including regular security-audit, post-incident public relations and investigative expenses, and criminal reward funds.”
Describing the digital highway as the hotline for cyber attack, Ibe said the company has been able to provide cyber enterprise risk management insurance policies to mitigate risk exposure for certain cost expenses after a breach or similar event. He reiterated that “Leadway, through research have been able to identify a particular area of cyber exposure where corporate entities can find themselves and see how we can do proper risk management and provide specific insurance product that can help them mitigate such exposures through cyber risk management insurance which in some quarters called cyber liability insurance and in some, cyber risk management insurance.”
“Risks of this nature are typically excluded from traditional commercial general liability policies or at least are not specifically defined in traditional insurance products. Most people believe that only large-scale industries, such as banks only need cyber security insurance. However, any electronic information such as your name, email, contact number, financial records, medical records, payment information, government documentation, etc., stored in your personal devices can be easily and quickly hacked by a genius hacker,” he explained.
“Cyber-insurance is a specialty lines insurance product intended to protect businesses, and individuals providing services for such businesses, from Internet-based risks, and more generally from risks relating to information technology infrastructure, information privacy, information governance liability, and activities related thereto,” he explained.
