New Consulting Services to Help Companies Augment Cyber Exposure Information and Gain Insights into Their Books of Business
BOSTON, April 11, 2016 — Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide today announced it has released the industry’s first open source deterministic cyber risk scenario. AIR plans to release a series of deterministic cyber scenarios over the next 12 months. AIR has also expanded its cyber risk consulting practice to help clients augment the cyber exposure information in their existing books of business and to produce custom reports on aggregation risk and the probability of breach, helping companies understand their cyber risk today. AIR Worldwide is a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business.
The AIR cyber scenarios, used in conjunction with AIR’s data schema, will serve as practical examples to help perform deterministic scenario modeling of an insurer’s or reinsurer’s book of business. AIR’s first cyber scenario will consist of a major cloud service provider experiencing downtime for several days, resulting in significant business interruption losses for its customers. A scenario such as this has the potential for revealing significant aggregation risk within an insurer’s book. Consulting clients will gain early access to future scenarios.
“AIR Worldwide is committed to broadening the understanding of loss potential from cyber breaches,” said Scott Stransky, assistant vice president and principal scientist, AIR Worldwide. “These open source deterministic cyber scenarios will supplement the number and variety of cyber scenarios that companies are currently managing, allowing the insurance industry to begin to truly understand their aggregated risk from large-scale cyber attacks that could lead to catastrophic accumulated losses.”
AIR’s cyber scenarios will include detailed descriptions of potential cyber events and be accompanied by SQL (Structured Query Language) scripts that capture the event’s severity and loss potential and can be run against a book of business. These SQL scripts are based on the open source Verisk Cyber Exposure Data Standard, enabling companies to view all the assumptions made within the scenario and modify them according to their view of risk. Using the scenarios, deterministic loss estimates can be studied for aggregations on cloud providers, payment processors, accidental breaches, blackouts, encryption quality, and more.
While AIR’s monthly cyber scenarios are designed to facilitate risk analytics and encourage the collection of exposure information necessary for modeling, AIR’s cyber consulting services offer modeling for a wide range of scenarios today. These new services can help underwriters identify the guidelines expected to affect cyber risk assessments the most. AIR’s unique database of company-specific information for tens of thousands of global commercial establishments can be leveraged to supplement company data with critical information such as cloud provider and employee count. Through these engagements, AIR can transfer client data into the standard format, augment it, and convert it into decision-making assets.
In January 2016, AIR and its parent company, Verisk Analytics, announced the Verisk Cyber Exposure Data Standard, designed to help create a uniform method for data transfer across the insurance value chain. AIR also developed a preparer’s guide to assist companies in collecting and storing the necessary cyber exposure data in an open format suitable for modeling, along with an SQL implementation, to allow organizations to begin to use the standard in their enterprises while helping them understand their exposure and aggregation risk, evaluate risk, and make underwriting decisions.
Stransky concluded, “As transferring cyber books of business across the insurance value chain becomes more widespread, the practical implementation of the Verisk Cyber Exposure Data Standard will help make the process more uniform. In addition, the schema we released will be used in the upcoming AIR probabilistic cyber model so that organizations can prepare for modeling cyber risk in the future.”
For more information about AIR’s cyber risk solutions, please visit http://airww.co/dcslp.
About AIR Worldwide
AIR Worldwide (AIR) provides catastrophe risk modeling solutions that make individuals, businesses, and society more resilient. AIR founded the catastrophe modeling industry in 1987, and today models the risk from natural catastrophes and terrorism globally. Insurance, reinsurance, financial, corporate, and government clients rely on AIR’s advanced science, software, and consulting services for catastrophe risk management, insurance-linked securities, site-specific engineering analyses, and agricultural risk management. AIR Worldwide, a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) business, is headquartered in Boston with additional offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.air-worldwide.com.
Contact:
Kevin Long
AIR Worldwide
617-267-6645
klong@air-worldwide.com