DLA Piper was recently denied a multimillion-dollar cyber insurance claim following the devastating NotPetya ransomware campaign of 2017.
The firm is preparing to launch a legal case against its insurer Hiscox for failing to pay out, but Hiscox insists the payout is not legal required because of an exclusion clause for attacks that are deemed an “act of war”.
This reasoning is also being used by Zurich, who is refusing to pay out confectionary giant Mondelez after suffering permanent damage to 1,700 servers and 24,000 laptops as well as unfulfilled orders and operational downtime.
Russia has been blamed for the June 2017 attacks, which originated in Ukraine but rapidly spread across the world via the VPNs of multi-nationals with offices in other countries, however, the Five Eyes governments that issued these statements failed to provide concrete evidence to back up their claims, so it won’t be easy for the insurers to make their case in court.
DL Piper was hit hard by the NotPetya ransomware strain after being infected via a supplier. The company’s flat networks stricture is said to have allowed the malware to spread rapidly across the globe.
As a result, the company was forced to pay 15,000 hours of overtime to IT employees to help recover from the attack. The company was eventually forced to start afresh with its entire Windows environment.
The likelihood of suffering from a ransomware attack is constantly increasing, so organizations need to take the necessary steps to avoid as much damage as possible. This starts with keeping computer systems up to date on security patches, hardening systems using CIS Benchmark guidance, and continuously monitoring for unplanned or unauthorized changes to your trusted baseline.