Inbox is source of over half of cyber insurance claims: Coalition

Over half of cyber insurance claims, 56%, were a result of funds transfer fraud (FTF) or business email compromise (BEC), according to the 2024 Cyber Claims report from Coalition, a cyber insurer. 

Shelley Ma, incident response lead at Coalition Incident Response, told Digital Insurance via email: 

“We’re confident that AI has caused an uptick in BEC and funds transfer fraud events in 2023. For BEC and FTF, which both often originate in the email inbox, this means more sophisticated and far-reaching phishing emails.”

The report suggests that phishing emails are becoming harder to detect because they’re being crafted using generative AI. 

Ma said: “As attackers leverage more AI tools, they can execute more sophisticated attacks at scale. We do have to caveat this by saying there’ll be no way for us to prove with 100% certainty that AI is behind the changes in attacks that we see, but it’s one explanation for the continued rise in these types of claims.”

Cyber claims increased year-over-year by 13% and overall severity increased by 10% year-over-year, according to the report. Claims severity seemed to stabilize during the second half of the year though. The report is based on claims data from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2023. A claim is defined as an adverse cyber event that is reported by a Coalition policyholder.