Author Archives: Hilary Tuttle

About Hilary Tuttle

Hilary Tuttle is the managing editor of the Risk Management Monitor and Risk Management magazine.
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Cybersecurity, Product Recall and Drones Top List of Emerging Casualty Risks

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The cybersecurity insurance industry is booming, with demand for this specialty coverage vastly outpacing any other emerging risk line, according to a new survey by London-based broker RKH Specialty. In fact, 70% of the insurance professionals surveyed listed cyber as the top casualty exposure.

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The brokers, agents, insurers and risk managers RKH queried after April’s RIMS 2015 conference said their top casualty concerns after cyber are product recall and drones (11% each), with others including e-cigarettes, autonomous vehicles and telematics totaling only eight percent.

RKH Specialty Study Graph

“Losses stemming from cyber-related attacks and business interruption can be catastrophic for individual businesses,” said Barnaby Rugge-Price, RKH Specialty’s CEO.

“Healthcare and retail have been the major buyers in the cyber space to date but we are seeing an increasing conversion rate across the whole of our portfolio. After a number of years of looking at the offering, clients are increasingly deciding to purchase the cover as the product has improved and the frequency of attacks has continued to increase. There has also been a heightened focus on the business interruption aspect, where cyber attacks can cause whole facilities to shut down. But whether cyber related or not, any interruption to the supply chain can cause a disproportionate loss. The survey highlights the importance of specialist insurance for a whole host of emerging risks.”

Turning specifically to property exposures, supply chain disruption was identified by 61% as the top risk, followed by flood (30%) and tornadoes (9%). The findings reflect a growing recognition of the potential exposures that longer and more complex supply chains introduce, the firm said.

The brokerage also asked insurance professionals what they think clients are and will be most concerned about when evaluating a broker’s service, and in turn, what brokers will need to focus on to stay competitive. They predict:

RKH Specialty broker service

FM Global Teaches Explosive Safety Lessons

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FM Global Fire Hazard Lab

This week, I ventured up to West Glocester, Rhode Island, home of the coolest place any insurance broker, insurance client, or risk management journalist can visit: the FM Global Research Campus.

Hurricane Force Wind Simulation

Because FM Global is intently focused on prevention of loss as the chief means of minimizing claims, the company maintains a 1,600-acre campus dedicated to property loss prevention scientific research. The biggest center of its kind, the research center features some of the most advanced technology to conduct research on fire, natural hazards, electrical hazards, and hydraulics. Here, experts can recreate clients’ warehouse conditions to test whether existing suppression practices would be sufficient in the event of a massive fire, for example.
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Fabricated hail or seven-foot 2x4s are shot from a cannon-like instrument at plywood, windows, or roofing to test whether these materials can withstand debris that goes flying in hurricane-strength winds. Hydraulic, mechanical and environmental tests are conducted on components of fire protection systems, like sprinklers, to ensure effectiveness overall and under the specific conditions clients face. Further, in cases where there were not sufficient loss prevention solutions, the company’s scientists and engineers have even designed and patented new, more effective sprinklers and other loss prevention technology, the rights to which are released so anyone can manufacture these improved safety measures.

Fire is the leading cause of loss in every calendar year, and watching a pile of plastic pallets ignite into a 60-foot fire while you feel the radiant heat through the glass of the lab’s observation deck is a powerful reality check for anyone evaluating risk exposure in their facility. As you watch the pallets melt, forming a plastic pool that also catches fire and spreads, you see the fire double in size every 45 seconds. If your strategy is primarily to rely on the local fire station, the researchers note, a minimal response time, assuming decent proximity, no traffic or inclement weather, and full staffing, would probably be at least five to 10 minutes. It only took seven minutes for their sample fire to reach almost three stories high, flickering around the edges of the massive ceiling-mounted calorimeter (which measures heat and the particles and smoke released).

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One of the most striking demonstrations comes in the form of a dust explosion. Whether released through product manufacturing, a byproduct of processing, or simply lazy housekeeping, a wide variety of dusts can fill the air in many facilities. Flour, sugar, metal dust, wood and resin are all highly flammable and exceptionally common.

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To cause an explosion, you simply need a few conditions: fuel (the dust), oxygen, ignition, suspension (in other words, the dust has not settled, increasing the surface area), and a confined space (ie. inside the facility, the dust stays in the environment). What happens then? Check out the video below for a slow-motion look at the explosion that results from just a hard hat full of phenolic resin.

47% of Consumers Have Not Changed Passwords in 5 Years

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online security passwords

More than 20% of consumers use passwords that are more than 10 years old, and 47% use passwords that have not been changed in five years, according to a recent report by account security company TeleSign. What’s more, respondents had an average of 24 online accounts, but only six unique passwords to protect them. A total of 73% of accounts use duplicate passwords.

Consumers recognize their own vulnerability.

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Four out of five consumers worry about online security, with 45% saying they are extremely or very concerned about their accounts being hacked – something 40% of respondents had experienced in the past year.

consumers worried about cybersecurity

While some companies may worry that adding too many security measures may frustrate or discourage users, this concern appears unfounded. Two thirds of respondents said they want online companies to provide more security, such as two-factor authentication (2FA). The real issue may be education. Even where this extra layer of protection is available, TeleSign found, a majority has not enabled it, with most among these users reporting that they do not understand what it is or how to use it. But, the survey found, 72% of consumers want to learn more about how to better secure their data.

learning about cybersecurity

“The number-one tip most experts give for increasing account security and stopping the fallout from data breaches is to turn on two-factor authentication,” said Steve Jillings, CEO of TeleSign. “Yet our research shows that the majority of consumers (61%) do not know what two-factor authentication is, even though it’s available on almost every account, free to the consumer and just waiting to be turned on.

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”

There is some good news, however. Some users in the United States are particularly learning – and acting upon – valuable lessons from highly publicized data breaches, with more people in the U.K. turning on 2FA because the site requires it, while more people in the U.S. did so to get an extra layer of protection. According to TeleSign, compared to respondents in the U.K., almost six times as many U.S. consumers turned on 2FA because their personal information was exposed in a data breach (17% vs. 3% of U.K. consumers). About three times the share of U.S. consumers enabled 2FA because they read or heard about a data breach (24% vs. 7%) or had an account hacked (23% vs. 9%).

What to Do About Reputation Risk

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Of executives surveyed, 87% rate reputation risk as either more important or much more important than any other strategic risks their companies face, according to a new study from Forbes Insights and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. Further, 88% say their companies are explicitly focusing on managing reputation risk.

Yet a bevy of factors contribute to reputation risk, making monitoring and mitigating the dangers seem particularly unwieldy. These include business decisions and performance in the following areas:

Financial performance: Shareholders, investors, lenders, and many other stakeholders consider financial performance when assessing a firm’s reputation.

Quality: An organization’s willingness to adhere to quality standards goes a long way to enhancing its reputation. Product defects and recalls have an adverse impact.

Innovation: Firms that differentiate themselves from their competitors through innovative processes and unique/niche products tend to have strong name recognition and high reputation value.

Ethics and integrity: Firms with strong ethical policies are more trustworthy in the eyes of stakeholders.

Crisis response: Stakeholders keep a close eye on how a company responds to difficult situations. Any action during a crisis can ultimately affect the company’s reputation.

Safety: Strong safety policies affirm that safety and risk management are top strategic priorities for the company, building trust, and value creation.

Corporate social responsibility: Actively promoting sound environmental management and social responsibility programs helps create a reputation “safety net” that reduces risk.

Security: Strong infrastructure to defend against physical and cybersecurity threats helps avoid security breaches that could damage a company’s reputation.

But brand crises make headlines with increasing frequency, and companies are laying responsibility at the feet of the C-suite, particularly chief risk officers. Deloitte reports that respondents considered the primary responsibility to rest with: the chief executive officer (36%), chief risk officer (21%), board of directors (14%), or chief financial officer (11%).

What can they do? The study offered these key points to consider when crafting a crisis management plan:

  • Don’t wait until a crisis hits to get ready. Monitoring, preparation and rehearsal are the most effective ways to get ready for a crisis event. Organizations that can plan and rehearse potential crisis scenarios should be better positioned to respond effectively when a crisis actually hits.
  • Every decision during a major crisis can affect stakeholder value. Reputation risks destroy value more quickly than operational risks.
  • Response times should be in minutes, not hours or days. Teams on the ground need to take control, lead with flexibility, make decisions with less-than-perfect information, communicate well internally and externally, and inspire confidence. This often requires outside-the-box thinking and innovation.
  • You can emerge stronger. Almost every crisis creates opportunities for companies to rebound. However, those opportunities will surface only if you’re looking for them.
  • When a crisis seems like it’s over, it’s not. The work goes on long after you breathe a sigh of relief. The way you capture and manage data, log decisions, manage finances, handle insurance claims, and meet legal requirements on the road back to normality can determine how strongly you recover.

But the real objective should be preventing these potential crises to begin with. Deloitte recommends exploring the possibilities of “risk sensing” – using real-time data to monitor the issues that might impact a company’s reputation:

Crisis management for C-suite executives

Check out the infographic below for more insights from the Deloitte Reputation@Risk survey:

Deloitte Reputation@Risk Global Survey