Cyber Insurance Market Report: How to Protect SaaS Apps from Cyberattacks

Source: pixabay

Market research firm Research and Markets has published a report on the cyber insurance market. Analysts estimate that the market will reach $20.432 billion by 2027, from $7.056 billion in 2020. It will grow at a CAGR of 16.40% during the forecast period.

The key driving factor of growth is the rising instances of cybercrimes globally. Based on cybersecurity trends, cybercrimes are among the fastest-growing crimes worldwide. Experts estimate the worldwide cost of cyber attacks to grow by 15% annually in the next five years and reach $10.5 trillion by 2025. Compare this to costs back in 2015, which were just around $3 trillion.

Organizations have become more aware of cyber threats and understand the need to have strategies in place in case of a cyber attack. One of these strategies is to get cyber insurance coverage. Cyber insurance is designed to protect against the financial damages of cyber attacks. These include security breaches and ransomware attacks. Though prioritizing IT security and implementing security protocols are still the best methods to combat cybercriminals, having cyber insurance coverage can lessen the impact of a cyberattack.

Healthcare Sector and SMEs Most Vulnerable

According to the report, the healthcare sector is one of the most important sectors of the cyber insurance market. Data breaches in the healthcare sector grew by 29.5 % from $7.13 million in 2020 to $9.23 million in 2021. Moreover, as more healthcare providers embrace digital transformation, they have also become attractive targets for cybercriminals. Thus, businesses in this sector need to consider getting cyber insurance coverage.

Meanwhile, SMEs are also at an increased risk of falling victim to cybercriminals. Due to the costs associated with cyber insurance services, smaller businesses often can’t afford or delay their coverage. Thus, if a small business or organization experiences a data breach or ransomware attack, it could put them out of operations for good.

Protecting SaaS Applications from Cyberattacks

In today’s digital business landscape, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a company or organization that uses only one SaaS application. Based on statistics, businesses worldwide used an average of 110 SaaS apps in 2021. As the use of SaaS apps increases, so does the risks involved in unauthorized access and cyber threats. As you can imagine, securing all these apps can be a nightmare for IT security teams. This is when cyber insurance coverage can provide security for organizations.

However, having cyber insurance should not take the place of implementing SaaS security best practices. While it’s true that SaaS security can be a daunting task due to a lack of time, resources, and staff, companies can leverage technology to maintain SaaS security.

Back in the day, organizations used Cloud-Access Security Broker (CASB) as a solution for SaaS security. CASB was basically a policy enforcer—it consolidates multiple types of security policy enforcement and applies them to what the organization utilizes in the cloud.

Today, a more modern and effective approach would be implementing automated SaaS security platforms. An important difference between CASB and automated solutions is that CASB only protects the organization’s internal IT network. This could be risky since remote work/hybrid work is very much a part of the post-COVID-19 workplace.

With automated security, organizations can still conduct effective monitoring of apps even when employees access them outside office premises. That’s why automated SaaS security is highly recommended for addressing SaaS misconfigurations.

Of course, even with advanced tech, organizations should also implement excellent security practices. Treating all administrative access to SaaS apps as privileged is one. Another is using single sign-on and multi-factor authentication for employees when accessing cloud-based apps.