SolarWinds Trojan Hack Estimated To Cost Cyber Insurers $90M

A recent worldwide hacking incident — one that even managed to compromise government systems — will likely cost cyber insurers $90 million for incident response and forensic services, experts project.

Russian state-sponsored hackers are believed to be behind the cyberattack that exploited a vulnerability on the latest update of SolarWinds’ IT management software.

As many as 18,000 SolarWinds customers — which include several US-based Fortune 500 companies and some agencies of the US and British governments — downloaded trojan malware hiding within the software update.

Experts say that the attack, while a national security nightmare, was fortunately not as disruptive to insurers.

"Although the SolarWinds attack is a cyber catastrophe from a national security perspective, insurers may have narrowly avoided a catastrophic financial incident to their businesses," BitSight director of insurance programs and partnerships Samit Shah explained in a blog post.