Hannover:
HDI Global places protection against cyber-attacks at the centre of services for its customers. The focus here is on cyber risk management. Alongside conventional risk transfer, the industrial insurer will now provide companies with “Value Added Services” covering defence against cyber-attacks.
This relates to more than a dozen services from specialist partners. They include safeguarding against accesses to IT systems, implementation of early-warning systems, crisis management and stress tests.
“We believe intensive risk management is the key to minimising the frequency and extent of loss and damage from cyber-attacks,” commented Dr Mukadder Erdönmez , Board Member of HDI Global SE and responsible for Liability, Cyber and Motor.
“That’s why we’re providing our customers with even more support to improve their level of IT readiness. At the same time, this enhances their resilience against cyber-attacks,” he said.
Over the past few months, HDI Global has set up a partner network made up of a series of specialist external service providers in order to be able to offer these cyber defence services. They are available to insurance customers with immediate effect.
“Alongside analysis of past cyber incidents, we have identified an array of typical cyber weaknesses in our risk analyses, which have resulted in business interruptions to companies. We have derived a number of Value Added Services from these experiences,” explained Meike Röllecke, Head of Cyber & Financial Lines.
“Irrespective of the insurance policy, these services are intended to help our customers arm themselves independently against cyber risks and increase their level of resilience. In order to deliver optimum results, we are working closely together with specialist service providers. They then deliver these services directly to our customers.”
Analyse and update operational security measures
The offers of the partners of HDI Global primarily fulfil two functions. They are extremely useful as preventive measures in the companies. And furthermore, they help the companies to achieve the necessary level of readiness and the minimum requirements for a cyber insurance policy.
The background to the initiative taken by HDI Global relates to the ongoing steady increase in the threat to companies from cyber-attacks and the increasing number of insurance losses resulting from attacks of this nature.
HDI Global believes that this dynamic pace adopted by the attackers must be reflected in the protection provided against cyber-attack. Operational safety measures therefore need to be continually analysed and updated in order to achieve a level appropriate to the risk.
“This is the reason why we’re having to say to our customers with increasing frequency that their IT protection measures, which were still adequate not long ago, are no longer sufficient in today’s world,” explained Meike Röllecke.
“That’s why joined-up risk dialogue with our customers is so important. When new risk situations come along, we want to be able to offer our customers constructive solutions with our Value Added Services.”
“Cyber protection: Just as important as the fire prevention measures to protect against fire hazards”
The offers comprise measures like penetration tests, multifactor authentication and cyber crisis exercises. Expressed in simple terms, these services offer a “preventive screening for the IT system” of a company, protection for accesses to IT systems and “digital fire prevention exercises”.
A service provider carries out various security tests on the company’s IT systems to identify potential vulnerabilities at an early stage.
“Fire protection measures are carried out on a regular basis and today it is standard practice to have fire extinguishers and fire protection doors.” This is a comparison drawn by HDI Global Risk Engineer Christian Reimann. “
However, calls to the digital firefighting service is rather a rare occurrence, and unfortunately digital preventive measures are still few and far between. We want to work on this. We need more preventive action among companies and among our customers.”
HDI Global is also planning expansion of personnel in the Risk Engineering Team. This is intended to optimally serve the increasing need of industrial companies in future for tailormade cyber insurance solutions and services.