Over the last couple of years, we have seen an increase in the number of cyber attacks targeting organizations. Just recently, we saw the Petya and WannaCry ransomware attacks that showed us how vulnerable individuals and organizations are to cyber attacks. Not many people are prepared for these and other cyber attacks and may end up losing valuable information and data as a result. You may not see this as a big deal if you have never experienced such an attack but for an organization, losing data can spell doom.
To address this, AON yesterday announced its Cyber Enterprise Solution that is made for organizations that want to protect themselves against data loss, cyber criminals and any other cyber-incident. As a country, we have been embracing the digital way from our own personal lives to our companies and even the government has been going this direction of late. This means that we are ta risk of cyber attacks on many different levels.
Given that most people do not think so much about what data they share or how vulnerable they are to attacks, cyber criminals can have a field day if they really want to. This was clearly demonstrated at the launch of the AON Cyber Enterprise Solution by Dr. Bright Gameli, a Cyber security specialist and the Co-founder of Africahackon. He showed how a cyber criminal can use publicly available and free tools to gather information about an organization and its employees and use the gathered information to launch a cyber attack on the said organization to steal valuable information. This is very terrifying and showed that we may not be as safe as we think we are even if we are in organizations with active firewalls in place. His message therefore was for organizations to have a cyber security strategy in place to not only protect against intruders but to have steps to take if an attack happens.
What is AON Cyber Enterprise Solution?
So, what is the AON Cyber Enterprise Solution? The short answer to this is it is a solution designed to protect organizations against catastrophic cyber risks. AON says it is a “property/casualty and Internet of Things insurance policy that offers comprehensive and integrated enterprise-wide coverage against cyber risk.“
According to AON, this policy provides a comprehensive cyber risk cover that includes cover for property damage arising out of a network security breach; products liability to address Internet of Things exposures; business interruption and extra expense coverage arising out of systems failure; contingent network business interruption for IT vendors and the supply chain; cyber terrorism coverage; privacy/security liability and event expense coverage; and media liability and technology errors and omissions by endorsement.
From AON’s point of view, this policy is necessary since data is very important to organizations and the bigger a company gets, the more cyber criminals may want to access its most valuable asset, data. With the launch of this product, the company wants to show its commitment to providing solutions for the wave of new and emerging risks that worry risk managers the most.
“Organisations rely on systems to conduct their core businesses. In the event that a hack attack, computer virus or malicious employee brings down these systems, a traditional business interruption policy would not respond. Aon Cyber Enterprise Solution is here to provide insurance cover for loss of profits associated with systems outage that might be caused by a “non-physical” threat like a computer virus,” said Aon Kenya Chief Executive Officer Sammy Muthui.
This product comes at a very crucial time in Kenya especially with the rise of cyber attacks. According to an ICT security survey conducted by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics &Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), Kenya lost about Sh18 billion ($175 million) to cybercrime in 2016. The survey also revealed that 48.4% of all government agencies reported data loss as a result of such attacks.
The survey also revealed that 7.1% of state institutions and 5.1% of businesses are hacked annually. You do not want to be part of this, do you?
Also Read: Ransomware: Should You Pay?
