Insurtech Insights USA 2023 has confirmed its list of expert panelists for the USA conference, taking place on June 7th and 8th at the Javits Center in New York.
Titled ‘The Technologies Creating a Dynamic Cyber Insurance Strategy’, the panel will see four cyber insurance industry leaders given their insights and opinions on the latest cyber issues and challenges.
Cyber attacks on major corporations have escalated since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, as digital transformation resulted in millions of companies to adopt online services. It’s more important than ever for the insurance industry to address these challenges and come up with a solution to protect businesses against the rising risk.
According to AAG IT, Nearly one billion emails were exposed in a single year, affecting 1 in 5 internet users. Data breaches cost businesses an average of $4.35 million in 2022. Around 236.1 million ransomware attacks also occurred globally in the first half of 2022.
The ITI USA 2023 expert panel speakers are:
– Erin Ayers, Managing Editor, Zywave Front Page News
– Roman Itskovich, Founder & CRO, At-Bay
– Trent Cooksley, COO, Cowbell
– Courtney Maugé, SVP, Cyber Practice Leader, NFP
– Hamesh Chawla, Co-Founder & CEO, Mulberri
Discussing cyber insurance innovation at ITI USA
Cyber is one of the fastest-growing spaces in the insurance industry. At-Bay alone was valued at 1.35 billion in 2021 because of the insurtech’s innovative approach to handling better cyber risk assessment and prevention.
Meanwhile, in 2022, Cowbell raised US$100 million to enhance its cyber insurance platform and improve services to SMBs.
Speaking recently about industry challenges, Rotem Iram, Founder and CEO of At-Bay, said recently: “Cybersecurity seems like an incredibly complicated and technical space where you don’t imagine your insurance company playing a major technical role, but if you look at every other domain of risk, it has always been the insurance company to standardise how risk mitigation should look like, incorporating different technologies and services… If it’s our money that is at stake, then we want to be the ones who understand the risk and take the measures to help stop it.”
Jack Kudale, Founder and CEO, Cowbell, is a vocal advocate when it comes to catering to the requirements of policyholders – and that means keeping abreast of the latest changes in the cyber industry. He believes the threat is continually elevating. He recently told the press: “The threat landscape has evolved dramatically. COVID-19 expanded the attack surface and [even] the Russian invasion of Ukraine has expanded that a great deal.”
He also stated: “Since its 2019 inception, Cowbell has delivered on its promise to meet the needs of our policyholders by aligning cyber coverage to their specific exposures, continuously monitoring their rapidly changing threat landscape, and offering access to unique risk mitigation resources.”
SIX major cyber attacks to disrupt leading companies since 2020
1) SolarWinds: In December 2020, Russian hackers gained access to the SolarWinds network, which provides services to numerous US Government agencies. The attacks compromised updates, allowing the hackers to gain access to sensitive data.
2) Microsoft Exchange Server hack: In March, 2021, a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group exploited vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange Server, allowing them to gain access to email accounts and the data of thousands of global organisations.
3) The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack: In May 2021, the US pipeline operator suffered a ransomware attack which forced the company to shut down for several days. Attackers are believed to be from a Russian hacking group called DarkSide, and demanded payment in exchange for restoring the company’s data.
4) Uber’s operational systems: In September 2022, Uber’s internal systems were compromised by an 18-year-old hacker, who managed to infiltrate the company’s HackerOne account, gaining access to a Slack account and obtained full admin on their AWS Web Services and GCP accounts.
5) Slack: On December 29, 2022, leading business communication tool, Slack, was hacked by a threat actor who had also downloaded private code repositories two days earlier. However, the company has stated that there was no impact on its code or services.
6) Reddit: The internet company was hit with a hack on February 9th 2023 that allowed hackers to access internal business systems and steal internal documents and source code. Reddit issued a statement saying cyber criminals used a phishing lure to target Reddit employees with a landing page impersonating its intranet site. This site attempted to steal employees’ credentials and two-factor authentication tokens.
