Aon Italy and RHEA Group announce a cyber-risk partnership
Global insurance broker Aon, and RHEA Group announce a partnership to support companies on cyber-risk, through new technologies and integrated solutions.
The statistics are clear: cyber-attacks are no longer a matter of if, but a matter of when. Cyber-risk has become one of the major threats to business continuity and business reputation, according to the 2017 Global Risk Management Survey published by Aon. The insurance market for cybersecurity is booming and is expected to grow exponentially in the years to come.
“In 2016, Aon has placed around 35% cyber premiums globally for about $450 million, but we expect them to grow to over $750 million by 2020,” said Enrico Vanin, CEO of Aon SpA and Aon Hewitt Risk & Consulting.
Cyber-risk is more complex and potentially dangerous than traditional risk, and this is forcing insurance companies and their clients to find a reliable approach to cybersecurity. Today’s cyber-risk assessment method, which is mainly qualitative and not technical enough, is falling short on completely mitigating cyber-threat.
The reality is that mitigating cyber-risk requires a deep technical diagnostic, linked to realistic and quantitative business impact analysis. The partnership between Aon and RHEA Group brings a revolutionary approach to the subject.
Aon’s expertise in insurance and risk assessment will be complemented by RHEA Group’s technical background on cybersecurity. Integrated teams from both companies will assess and quantify the risk associated with complex IT infrastructures using the PSEC® (now Starlings Soar®) tool, a non-invasive diagnostic system developed by RHEA Group.
Starlings Soar® allows an automated, full-scale mapping of vulnerabilities and related potential cyber-threats affecting a company’s IT infrastructure, evaluating and quantifying the relevant impacts on core business processes and eventually identifying the most available mitigation actions.
“Starlings Soar® is unique because it allows for a quantitative analysis of the cyber-risk associated with any IT infrastructure. These capabilities are exclusive to RHEA Group and complement those of Aon, allowing the company to reinforce their offer to clients with a profound technical understanding of cyber-risk and the possibility to precisely quantify the risk based on hard facts,” said Mario Bizzi, Managing Director of RHEA System SpA.
The partnership has kicked off with several meetings with clients in various business sectors, to demonstrate the capabilities of the integrated approach and the new Starlings Soar® platform. In the coming months, several companies will start with the cyber-risk assessments. “We have had numerous meetings with clients, and their reactions couldn’t have been more positive. The partnership with Aon has proved that we are on the right path for extending RHEA Group security methodologies and quantitative risk assessment solutions to protect companies in all sectors,” concluded Bizzi.
