AIG Creates New Model to Score Client Cyber Risk

Insurance giant American International Group said this week that it has developed a new cyber benchmarking model that quantifies and scores the cyber risk of its clients.

The new model, AIG says, evaluates a client’s cyber security maturity against 10 common attack patterns across 11 commonly used technology devices. 

While the insurer did not provide details on the attack patterns and technologies used to benchmark cyber risk, it says the model “incorporates critical security data, such as current threat intelligence from multiple sources, effectiveness of an organization’s cyber controls, potential impact of a cyber breach on an organization, and insights gained from the thousands of cyber claims handled by AIG.”

“We developed the model based on historical insights and patterns of how companies experience cyber breaches – the points of entry and the types of attacks and vulnerabilities seen in the vast majority of cyber breach scenarios,” says Tracie Grella, Head of Cyber Risk Insurance at AIG. “Companies have been demanding a way to benchmark their cyber maturity against these known cyber risks to quantify what they are up against and where they stand.”

Clients that provide the required information can receive a report detailing security scores, peer benchmarking, and key risk mitigation controls to help quantify cyber risk.

“AIG is partnering with Darktrace to leverage its AI technology to address a cumbersome and outdated process for assessing cyber risk — manual questionnaires asking for information that most corporations don’t even know the correct answers to, leading to high premiums based on little to no hard evidence,” a Darktrace spokesperson told SecurityWeek.

“As an insurer, we gain a better understanding of the level of risk we are taking on with each client so we can react accordingly,” said Grella. “Our new model combined with CyberMatics can help our clients make informed and quantifiable decisions about their preparedness for cyber security risk events and insurance cover.”

In 2014, AIG expanded its cyber insurance offering to include property damage and bodily injury that could be caused as a result of cyberattacks. 

While AIG has developed its own model to rank client cyber risk, third part solutions are also available to help brokers and underwriters. In August 2014, FireEye announced a new line of services designed specifically to help brokers and underwriters gain visibility into enterprises’ exposure to cyber threats.