Specialist cyber risk adviser Infosure has called on brokers to “get ahead” of the threat facing business clients.

“Cyber incidents are not theoretical any more,” director Andrew Brett says in a LinkedIn post. “They are not ‘big business problems’. They are everyday business problems, and they are landing hard on organisations that never imagined they would be targets.”

Mr Brett says he regularly speaks with managed service providers that fear being seen as negligent if they do not recommend cyber insurance to their clients.

“But what about insurance brokers? When a client suffers a cyber incident and discovers they are uninsured, the financial and operational fallout can be devastating.”

He says brokers are trusted advisers and “that trust comes with a duty to educate, challenge assumptions, and ensure our clients fully understand the risks they are choosing to take when they do not insure.

“Cyber risk is now one of the most foreseeable exposures in the market, which means the absence of a clear recommendation, or at least a documented conversation, is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

“At what point do we see the first professional indemnity claim attempt against an insurance broker for not adequately recommending cyber insurance to their client?

“The broking industry needs to get ahead of this before the courts do.”

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