CYBER-INSURANCE: NEED OF THE HOUR?

Abstract

There have been a lot of instances of hacking of databases & databanks and spreading of viruses to erase all the data possessed by individuals or multi-national companies. With the increase in the use of crypto-currencies, the crime of crypto-jacking is on the rise. The ransomware attack in the year 2018 shook companies across the globe. Multi-National Companies which run on Big Data and their businesses that are solely dependent on their databases, were affected. A ransomware attack is when a virus is spread, to latch onto to confidential information of companies, which can only be removed upon meeting the cyber-attacker’s demands. Similar to ransomwares, are malware attacks, which are attacks where certain computer soft-wares are created, just to disrupt or corrupt the memory of databases, causing loss of information. In the 21st Century, data and information is all what the world survives on, and any loss of data can prove to be fatal. There is a lot of money involved in the processing and accessing of data, and hence, the Insurance sector has seen a rise in the concept of cyber-insurance. With an already prevalent Insurance sector, the author would like to bring to light, the niche created by cyber-insurance in the insurance market, examine the fundamental difference and relationship between cyber-insurance and cyber-security in order to establish the reasons as to why they are indispensable to each other, being independently, equally important.