Risk Consulting 3/2020, Cyber issue

During the Covid-19 pandemic, cybersecurity experts and officials witnessed a significant rise in cyber-attacks. In fact, the number of attacks, as well as the severity of these attacks, have both grown. In this issue of Risk Consulting magazine, we offer you insights from If’s leading digital risks and cyber experts.

Read more in the editorial

Articles in Risk Consulting 3/2020, Cyber issue

Insights into cyber and digital risks

Why did we dedicate an entire issue to cyber now? For one thing, cyber is something invisible and abstract in nature. Also, digital risks and cyber threats are relatively new and unknown to many yet are a critical and evolving area of risk management. As cyber attacks are on the rise, the cyber insurance market is growing rapidly, making this topic very timely indeed.

During Covid-19, cyber crime has skyrocketed. Criminal gangs and hackers quickly began to benefit from the fear and confusion that ensued, as the virus spread around the world.

The past months have really highlighted the importance of digital tools that today’s employees depend on. It is hard to imagine a situation where all those assets would not be available, or the
data processed by them compromised.

The current cyber threat landscape and future risks are actively followed at If. With the launch of the Digital Risks & Cyber unit, we offer solid inhouse expertise to support our clients and partners. The unit is responsible
for underwriting and risk management of If Industrial's cyber insurance portfolio.

Glossary

IoT

Internet of Things

AI

Artificial Intelligence

Ransomware payload

The code encrypting the files and requiring ransom in exchange

Zero day vulnerability

A vulnerability in software that is previously unknown to the vendor, and therefore no patch or fix for it is available yet.

A zero-day exploit

Malicious code making use of a zero day vulnerability

PCI-DSS

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard,
a standard governing the cybersecurity of the card payment solutions globally

MFA

Multi-Factor Authentication – a method of authentication requiring at least two “factors” to authenticate. In most common enterprise deployment, password is the first factor, complemented by an Authenticator application
as the second factor.

DoS, DDoS

Attack that floods systems, servers, or networks with traffic to exhaust resources and bandwidth. As a result, the system is unable to fulfill legitimate requests. Modern attacks are typically distributed (DDoS), meaning it originates from a large amount of computers, e.g. a Botnet.

Botnet

A collection of hijacked computers remotely controlled by a cybercriminal to perform tasks such as email spamming or DDoS attacks