Insurance

NAICOM to mandate insurance companies procure cyber cover for data protection

NAICOM

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Chuks Udo Okonta

The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) is presently working on a regulation that would mandate all insurance companies to procure cyber cover to secure data of policyholders in their custody.

The Commissioner for Insurance Sunday Thomas, disclosed this at the recently held Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) 2022 Business Outlook Seminar in Lagos, adding that it has become necessary for insurance firms to secure data in their custody due to risks associated with cyber crime.

He noted that the deployment of technology by operators to execute their operations has necessitated the need for the cover, stressing that data provided by policyholders should be properly secured.

According to a report by cybercrime Magazine, Cybercrime is to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.

Cybersecurity Ventures, it said expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 per cent per year over the next three years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015. This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.

The damage cost estimation is based on historical cybercrime figures including recent year-over-year growth, a dramatic increase in hostile nation-state sponsored and organized crime gang hacking activities, and a cyberattack surface which will be an order of magnitude greater in 2025 than it is today.

Cybercrime costs include damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational harm.

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