This year we find that cyber debt continues to build with GenAI, rise of machine identities, and increasing third- and fourth-party risks. This growth in vulnerable identities, boosted by the ongoing AI transformation and pervasive cloud computing, is a here-and-now threat ready to be exploited by bad actors with the AI-powered ability to execute at scale. Perhaps the only thing more disturbing than the emergence of deepfake videos is our collective overconfidence that we won’t be fooled by them.

In this report, nearly half of organizations anticipate a threefold increase in the total number of identities, with machine identities squarely in the driver’s seat (but largely under-secured and over-privileged). This growth in vulnerable identities, boosted by the ongoing AI transformation and pervasive cloud computing, is a here-and-now threat ready to be exploited by bad actors with the AI-powered ability to execute at scale. In the last 12 months, 93% of organizations suffered two or more identity-related breaches.

This is the first published study in this field to include SPoF (Single Point of Failure) data, which highlights the dependencies a company has on third-party systems and services. This paper represents a snapshot of our ongoing work exploring what is a deep and highly complex dataset.

In this report, Marsh McLennan’s team demonstrated a statistically significant correlation between all of our dark web intelligence sources - including (but not limited to) dark web market listings, hacking forum chatter, and dark web traffic to and from the corporate network - and an increased likelihood of suffering a cybersecurity incident. Put simply: the presence of any dark web findings related to an organization - without exception - was associated with a higher likelihood of a breach.

This year’s edition of the Cyber Readiness Report explores the critical role of robust cyber resilience in mitigating evolving organisational risks and safeguarding reputations. This year’s research reveals that concerns of reputational damage, caused by the loss of sensitive information, is a driving force behind responses to ransomware attacks. Over the past 12 months, the top three reasons organisations paid ransom were: to protect their customer data, to protect their reputation, and to recover their data because they did not have any back-ups.

At Gallagher Re, we have been exploring this data’s vast potential for several years. This research has informed the development of a suite of proprietary tools and services aimed at supporting the (re)insurance community in realising the potential of cyber data to enhance underwriting and portfolio monitoring. Principal among these is TIDE, our portfolio quality and benchmarking tool.

The 3rd edition of the Lucy Study builds on a four-year history of objective comprehensive and robust data. The study lacks precision on the segment of small and micro companies. The number of insured companies - and there analyzed - is not yet sufficient in relation to the number of companies listed by INSEE.

This report is based on the summary statistical analysis of over 10,000 cyber claims for incidents that occurred during the five-year period 2019–2023. We see enormous variances in the magnitude of loss data. The smallest claims were less than $1,000; the largest were over $500M. The numbers of records exposed ranged from 1 to over 140M.

ThreatLabz found that ransomware attacks increased by 17.8% year-overyear based on blocked attempts in the Zscaler cloud, while ransomware attacks identified through data leak site analysis surged by 57.8%. The findings presented in this report underscore the need for organizations to prioritize protection against the relentless tide of ransomware. The insights and strategies in the report serve as a crucial guide for improving your ransomware defenses.

This year’s research shows that, while most businesses have a ransomware strategy in place, many are incomplete. They’re either missing a documented plan or the right people to execute it. As a result, we see that many organizations are paying the ransom. Likewise, whilst many have cyber insurance, too many simply don’t know if or to what degree it covers them for ransomware attacks.

This report nearly coincided with one of the most disruptive cyber attacks in the history of healthcare. The massive payment disruptions for U.S. healthcare providers resulting from the February 2024 BlackCat ransomware attack on Change Healthcare was an extreme yet highly illustrative example of the third-party risks stemming from high interdependence among healthcare organizations. This paper aims to help healthcare organizations and their partners reduce such risks.

Howden’s fourth annual report on the cyber insurance market. The themes for this year’s edition are risk, resilience and relevance.This report reveals that more than half of premium growth is likely to emanate from non-U.S. territories. In the major European economies of Germany, France, Italy and Spain alone, the premium uplift potential in just replicating penetration levels recorded in more mature markets can be measured in the (high) hundreds of millions of euros.

The report is based on the findings of an independent, vendor-agnostic survey commissioned by Sophos of 5,000 IT/cybersecurity leaders across 14 countries in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. The research reveals that investing in cyber defenses to optimize your insurance position is a double win: organizations report both easier and cheaper access to coverage as well as wider benefits such as improved protection, fewer alerts, and freeing up IT time. This finding further emphasizes the importance of considering cyber risk investments holistically, rather than as individual components.

The fifth Sophos annual study of the real-world ransomware experiences of manufacturing and production organizations around the globe explores the full victim journey, from root cause to severity of attack, financial impact, and recovery time. Fresh new insights combined with learnings from our previous studies reveal the realities facing businesses today and how the impact of ransomware has evolved over the last five years.

This report delves into the depths of cyber risk management, unearthing the critical coverage gaps that threaten organizational stability in the wake of cyberattacks. In an era where digital threats loom larger than ever, businesses are increasingly turning to cyber insurance as a safeguard against the financial ravages of data breaches. Yet CYE’s study leveraging external and internal datasets reveals a stark reality: the protection afforded by such insurance may fall significantly short of the actual costs incurred during cyber incidents.

The Arctic Wolf State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report took the temperature of organizations around the globe and sought to understand how they were responding to these areas of challenge. Our research revealed that ransomware continues to be a perennial area of concern. For the third year in a row, ransomware ranked as the top concern for respondents. This concern is not without merit when we consider that 45% of the organizations we spoke with admitted to being the victim of a ransomware attack within the last 12 months, a 3% increase over last year.

Coalition’s 2024 Cyber Claims Report features data and case studies from organizations across the United States. Cyber risk is global, and we believe this report’s trends and risk mitigation strategies are applicable regardless of location. As an active partner in protecting organizations from digital risk, we’re proud to share these insights to help policyholders, brokers, and others in our industry stay informed about the ever-changing threat landscape.

This paper explores the benefits of counterfactual analysis for cyber (re)insurers and provides a framework that can help exposure risk managers, actuaries, and catastrophe modelers incorporate it into their standard suite of risk assessment tools. The paper also contains some worked examples of cyber counterfactual analysis that Gallagher Re has conducted in collaboration with CyberCube.

The State of Email & Collaboration Security 2024 report is based on an in-depth global survey of 1,100 information technology and cybersecurity professionals. Mimecast commissioned UK-based research firm Vanson Bourne to conduct the survey, which took place during October and November 2023.Survey participants worked at organizations ranging from 250 to 500 employees to more than 10,000 employees.

This research demonstrates the continual progression of a cybersecurity conundrum that has become an unfortunate but permanent part of the digital environment. Progress is being made, but new fronts open up and new challenges emerge in a seemingly endless cycle. As the need for security rises to a board level concern, cyber leaders are facing more strategic issues to defend against, even while ongoing threats persist. As those security leaders stand to meet the threats, it behooves organizational leaders to provide the support and resources necessary to help enable those they must count on to keep their enterprises safe.

The NetDiligence Cyber Claims Study presents findings from a five-year dataset of over 9,000 real-world cyber insurance claims. In this spotlight, we focus on the subset of BEC incidents: 17% of claims reported (N=1,480) between 2018 and 2022. BEC starts with human error and ends with high crisis services costs. Educating and training the workforce is a continual and incremental process. Preventing BEC is the endless task of cybersecurity