Recently, prominent insurance industry publications published articles by Ironwall by Incogni CEO Ron Zayas, discussing the ongoing ransomware threat and strategies to keep organizations safe.
The articles, published in Insurance News Net and PropertyCasualty360, both focused on the challenge facing insurance companies and all financial services organizations from the rapidly rising risk of a data breach, and the serious repercussions that follow.
How serious? In 2021, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States, CNA Financial, reportedly agreed to a $40 million payment to restore system access following a ransomware attack. And earlier this year, First American became a victim as well – for the second time. Four years earlier, the same company suffered a cybersecurity breach that resulted in a $500,000 settlement with the SEC, and a payment of $1 million to the New York DFS as part of a settlement relating to the exposure of consumers’ non-public information.
What Can Be Done?
As these articles explain, it’s not the servers falling victim to malicious code – it’s the employees who unwittingly open phishing emails that look authentic.
Using artificial intelligence, hackers are collecting personal information on all of us, which is easily obtained online from a multitude of sources. This content is then customized into an email that appears to come from a friend or co-worker. If someone clicks a link in one of those emails, the entire IT system is compromised.
Think your personnel won’t be fooled? Think again. Penetration tests have proven that as many as 4 out of every 100 employees will be taken in. For a company that employs thousands of people, that can be a sobering thought.
Check out the Insurance News Net article for more information about this danger, and what can be done to prevent it.
The PropertyCasualty360 article is available only to publication subscribers. However, for even more information and tips about this vital topic, you can download our whitepaper: Ransomware and Financial Institutions: A Prevention and Protection Strategy.
This whitepaper will teach you:
- Latest Tactics: Understand how modern phishing scams are developed and why they are increasingly successful.
- Preventive Measures: Discover actionable steps to protect your organization.
- Phishing Prevention: Find out how lowering the amount of private information available online about your employees can take your organization off of hackers’ target lists.
