More merger-and-acquisition activity and technology consolidation have given cyber hackers plenty of entry points to exploit, making third-party cyber risk a dominant driver of claims for Resilience in 2024.
New research from the San Francisco-based cyber solutions company found 31% of claims it handled in 2024 dealt with third-party risk, including ransomware and outages affecting vendors.
“Third-party risk isn’t only making headlines—it’s driving unprecedented losses. While this risk is often invisible until it’s too late, it’s now clear that the industry has reached a tipping point,” said Vishaal “V8” Hariprasad, co-founder and CEO of Resilience. “Businesses can no longer afford to consider their partners’ vulnerabilities as siloed from their own. By understanding this new reality of shared risk, enterprises can make smarter business decisions and meaningfully mitigate material loss.”
Third-party risk led to claims with incurred losses for the first time ever. Resilience said this claims made up 23% of incurred claims in 2024, compared to none in 2023.
Recent incidents such as Change Healthcare, CDK, PowerSchool have highlighted how cyber hacker exploit single points of failure.
Additional new findings from Resilience, which build upon its Midyear Cyber Risk Report, include that ransomware kept its position as the top cause of loss in 2024. More than 60% of Resilience claims were related to ransomware.
The cyber insurer also flagged transfer fraud as rising in popularity. Claims involved transfer fraud made up 18% of incurred claims in 2024.