Last week, the German group Allianz, one of the most important insurance companies in the world, published the influential Risk Barometer 2022. According to 2,650 risk management experts in 89 countries, this is a report that identifies the most important commercial risks from each year
Fabio Sánchez, OCP TECH’s Cybersecurity Practice Director, analyzed the results in this study which highlighted that the first risk for this year is computer-related crime: IT system failures, data breaches, penalties, and others. It also showed an increase of 44% regarding people’s conception in 2021, when this type of issue ranked third. This year’s data shows that cybersecurity, as a potential threat, is something bigger than the collapse of supply chains and the new pandemic outbreaks which had been two of the most worrying issues in 2021. 57% of the interviewees believe that ransomware will be the biggest threat in 2022.
“During the past years, seizure of data has been the most widely used method for cybercrime - stated Sánchez – with far more sophisticated tactics that inexperienced cybercriminals can acquire for just 40USD per month. This enables them to avoid security barriers to seize data and obtain profits; whether by demanding a ransom or threatening to publish the user’s sensitive data if they do not agree to pay for such extortion. The lack of expert knowledge and the rise of cryptocurrency that helps avoid being identified or tracked is what made this method so attractive.”
The Allianz Risk Barometer 2022 proves that, in the past, while a thief could rob a bank after an intelligence work that could have lasted for months, today, a cyberattack can be done, simultaneously, to thousands of companies in any place of the world. In this sense, the advance in the storage capacity is also a problem; a gigabyte of data is the equivalent to the information found in 5,000 books.
According to Sanchez: “the popularity of cyber crimes is a consequence for reacting too late to the many obstacles that the COVID-19 pandemic left us; labor movement in remote environments without taking all security measures, the necessity to open the network and the access to data center for suppliers and third parties in different parts of the world. All of these left an unsealed net causing an increase in attacks which, nowadays, the criminals are taking advantage of in different ways such as ransomware and data theft. Understanding the cause will help us find a solution to make it harder for criminals to access our data and information.”
The Allianz Risk Barometer also points out that cyber insurance hiring has significantly increased in the past three years. This results from a higher acceptance and trust about insurance, as well as the loss increase by external manipulation from the systems. The claims from cyber insurance companies, linked to attempts of ransomware, increased by 50% in 2020, in comparison to 2019, although in 2021’s first semester, these had already reached the total of claims compared to the last year. Although this trend seems unstoppable, the insurers and companies have begun to adopt more effective cybersecurity measures, the national states have started to typify and fight against ransomware and the complaints seem to have become more stable.
After ransomware, Allianz’s report shows that the cyberattacks to supply chains and platforms in the cloud will be the second most important threat in 2022. Lastly, 34% of the experts that were interviewed, expressed that the work’s vulnerability will be the biggest threat in 2022.
Sanchéz assured that, “all of these figures reinforce the importance of having cybersecurity systems and solutions at the companies, governments and banks to protect the most valuable thing we have: our clients’ data.” For that reason, he added: “at OCP TECH, we have a group of well-known and certified technicians, skilled in different areas that endorse our track record and the success of our solutions.”