France to develop cyber risk insurance

Paris, Sep 8 (IANS) France's Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industrial & Digital Sovereignty announced an action plan to develop cyber risk insurance.

According to the ministry, the digitisation of the economy creates new vulnerabilities for companies, and contributes, in particular, to the emergence of cyber risk, Xinhua news agency reported.

"As they increase in volume, frequency and complexity, cyberattacks today have the potential to threaten the survival of a business," the ministry said in a press release, adding that "resilience to cyber risk is therefore a major issue of sovereignty."

"Cyber risk is still relatively uninsured, and represents only nearly 3 percent of damage insurance contributions for professionals," the ministry said.

The action plan contains four major parts, clarifying the legal framework for cyber risk insurance, promoting a better assessment of cyber risk, improving the sharing of risk information between policyholders, insurers and reinsurers with innovative solutions of insurance, and increasing the efforts to raise awareness of cyber risk to companies.

The ministry will create a task force by the end of September to implement the guidelines.