Companies not using insurance to protect against cyber risk: Chubb

More than 70% of public companies in North America have an incident response plan for an electronic security breach, yet 57% of those firms do not include cyber liability insurance as part of that plan, notes a new risk survey by Chubb Insurance.

Survey respondents identified cyber risk as the number one concern facing their company, with 52% indicating they are dedicating additional resources toward mitigating the risk of a data breach. Roughly one-quarter of companies said their firms expect to experience some type of cyber breach in the coming year.

While 65% of public companies surveyed do not purchase cyber insurance, 63% of decision-makers said they are concerned about their companies’ exposure to cyber risk.

The results, part of Chubb’s broader 2012 Public Company Risk Survey of 145 public companies in the U.S. and Canada, were recently released as part of an infographic the company prepared.

Chubb noted that two in five companies experience a significant cyber security issue in a recent 12-month period, according to the Computer Security Institute. A typical data breach resulted in $5.5 million in organizational costs.