From: Risk.net
Author: Jessica Meek
Security test results may scare them, delegates hear
Insurers should be conducting a cyber attack penetration test exercise on their organisations in the face of increasing threat from cyber attacks.
John Langione, chief risk officer at QBE North America, said that the emerging data security risk “scared” him and should be scaring others too.
“For any of you who haven’t done so yet, I recommend you conduct an attack and penetration [test] of your organisation and see what those results are if you want to get a little bit frightened of what could possibly happen. I don’t know any company that has come through that clean,” he said.
The widespread use of social media had increased the risk of data loss – often inadvertent disclosure of employee information on a social media site that could open up a vulnerability for the company, Langione warned. “From an internal perspective, that scares us quite a bit and is something we remain uncomfortable with.”
QBE was now taking the risks of social media use into account from an underwriting perspective as well, he added. “As we look at those risks and we look at what clients are or are not doing, we are very, very careful about the risks we are willing to work with.”
Todd Jones, chief risk officer at Northwestern Mutual, said the risk function could no longer ignore the data risk, in particular the risks associated with social media.
“The whole social media aspect is here to stay, and while I say here to stay, it is, of course, going to evolve somehow and be ever-changing. The important thing is to actually address the risk because I believe this is the way communications are going to happen with new generations, the way sales are going to happen,” he said.
The use of social media as business tool was something that the risk function would like to prevent but this was not possible, Jones added. “But we can’t be the ‘say no’ function, so we have to work with the business areas, the marketing areas to get it right so that I can sleep at night without worrying about it.”
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