Minerva Tackles Cyber Security Flaws

Minerva has started offering cyber liability insurance cover in a move to counter cyber risks and attacks that have over the past years have grown with the latest ransom ware attacks around the country and the world

Minerva embraces emerging  trends by introducing its cyber liability cover which aims at protecting and covering cyber attacks, data protection and cyber security

Cyber security has become a leading issue for many organization as awareness on cloud computing, social media, big data and state sponsored has grown. In an increasingly punitive legal and regulatory environment and  in the face of more frequent contractual insurance requirements specifying cyber liability, forward thinking, companies are taking proactive steps to explore and transfer cyber risk,” read  the company’s statement

Cyber-insurance is an insurance product used to protect businesses and individual users from Internet-based risks, and more generally from risks relating to information technology infrastructure and activities. Risks of this nature are typically excluded from traditional commercial general liability policies or at least are not specifically defined in traditional insurance products. Coverage provided by cyber-insurance policies may include first-party coverage against losses such as data destruction, extortion, theft, hacking, and denial of service attacks; liability coverage indemnifying 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.

In order to counter the risk posed by these threats, network users have traditionally resorted to antivirus and anti-spam software, firewalls, intrusion-detection systems (IDSs), and other add-ons to reduce the likelihood of being affected by threats.

In practice, large industries (companies like Symantec, McAfee, etc.) as well as considerable research efforts are currently centered on developing and deploying tools and techniques to detect threats and anomalies in order to protect the cyber infrastructure and its users from the resulting negative impact of the anomalies.

Any organization can expose themselves to the cyber risk exposure especially those that gather, maintain, disseminate or store private information, those that have high degree of dependency on electronic process or computer networks, and those who are concerned about intentional acts by rogue employees

The first party coverage has information asset which covers damage to or theft of the insured information assets from its computers system and other various costs resulting from a security or privacy breach among others as insurers pay out on cyber-losses, as these threats also develop and change, insurance products are increasingly being purchased alongside existing IT security services. Indeed, the underwriting criterion for insurers to offer cyber insurance products is also early in development and underwriters are actively partnering with IT security companies to develop their products.

Cyber-insurance is very beneficial in the event of a large-scale security incident. Insurance provides a smooth funding mechanism for recovery from major losses, helping businesses to return to normal and reducing the need for government assistance and also allows cyber-security risks to be distributed fairly, with higher premiums for companies whose expected loss from such risks is greater

As the impact to people and businesses from cyber threats is also relatively broad when compared to the scope of protection provided by insurance products, insurance companies continue to develop their services. ., it is impossible to achieve perfect/near-perfect cyber-security protection due to Scarce existence of sound technical solutions, difficulty in designing solutions catered to varied intentions behind network attacks. misaligned incentives between network users, security product vendors, and regulatory authorities regarding protecting the network, difficulty to measure risks resulting in challenges to designing pertinent risk removal solutions and liability shell games played by product vendors.

To highlight the importance of improving the current state of cyber-security,the government of Zimbabwe through the ministry of information communication and Technolog, postal and courier services has drafted a cyber  security bill which is currently iat the Attoney Generals office