It’s rare for a week to pass without a cyber incident hitting the headlines. Last week was no different. On Friday one of the two Singaporean government health databases was breached with 1.5 million patient names and addresses being compromised. The hackers infected a SingHealth computer with malware granting access to the database’s contents. No medical records are thought to have been stolen but the event again highlighted that even well-resourced government organizations are not immune to cyber-attacks.
The healthcare sector, with a huge concentration of personally identifiable information, is a prized target for cyber criminals. Unlike credit card data, which can be destroyed and reissued, healthcare data belongs to an individual for life – you can’t change your blood type! On average it remains by far the most valuable data type to steal due to its’ resalable value on the black market. It is therefore of little surprise that the BBC reported, “The data of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, including information on his outpatient dispensed medicines, was specifically and repeatedly targeted.”
Over the past three years, the number of JLT clients purchasing cyber insurance protection has more than doubled and average policy limits, amongst our top 5 clients, have increased from USD 5m to USD 15m in Singapore. So what has prompted this explosive growth in an industry where traditional classes of insurance classes grow on average at 3-4% in a good year?
Source: https://www.asia.jlt.com/our-insights/cyber-decoder/singapore-cyber-breach-makes-global-headlines