Cyber Risk Assessment: turning exposure data into insurable decisions
Cyber risk is no longer only an IT loss. It is a balance-sheet exposure that combines business interruption, data restoration, liability, fraud, regulatory response and dependence on critical suppliers.
What a practical cyber assessment should reveal
Technical frequency is not the same as financial severity
Business interruption often drives the largest scenario
A frequent technical alert may have little financial impact, while a single outage of a critical platform can stop revenue for days. Kompetenz therefore models loss severity and recovery time before recommending limits and retentions.
Direct loss
- Forensics and incident response
- Data and system restoration
- Business interruption and extra expense
- Extortion response where legally insurable
Third-party and balance-sheet loss
- Privacy and network-security liability
- Regulatory investigation and defence
- Dependent business interruption
- Social engineering and funds-transfer fraud
A practical research-to-placement framework
Map critical digital dependencies
Identify systems, data, cloud services and vendors whose failure can interrupt revenue, safety or customer delivery.
Quantify three to five loss scenarios
Separate response costs, lost profit, restoration, legal liability and fraud. Model both the organisation and its critical suppliers.
Test policy mechanics
Review waiting periods, sub-limits, systemic-event language, war exclusions, infrastructure failure, vendor coverage and claims notification requirements.
Build claims evidence before an incident
Pre-agree the data sources needed to prove restoration costs and lost profit, and align the incident-response plan with the policy.
Board-level questions for the next renewal
- Which single digital dependency can create the largest loss?
- Does the programme respond if the outage begins at a cloud or technology provider?
- How much liquidity is required during the waiting period?
- Are ransomware, privacy, fraud and physical consequences treated consistently?
- Can finance and IT produce claims-ready evidence within the first 72 hours?
