Lord John Reid is the keynote speaker for Advisen’s Cyber Risk Insights Conference in London on Feb. 25. He is a principal at the Chertoff Group and chair of the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies. Reid has dedicated his career to public service as a member of Parliament for 23 years, half of which were in service as a government minister. Reid served in a leadership position across several security-related portfolios in the United Kingdom including Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Northern Ireland Secretary, and Minister for Transport and Armed Forces Minister.
Advisen: Michael Chertoff (co-founder and chairman of the Chertoff Group and former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) has called cybersecurity our biggest threat. How do you see it?
John Reid: We are only beginning to come to terms with cyber risk—an environment that permeates most everything in our personal and business lives, connects infrastructure, and changes the way we communicate and view relationships. There are unprecedented vulnerabilities.
How so?
The scale of this is huge. Privacy, crime, fraud, manipulation, espionage, terrorism and war—whether motivated by personal gain or some ideological reason—there are so many levels of challenges. The assumption the private sector cannot be a target no longer holds water. Our vital infrastructure with the physical or public sector is so integrated with the private sector.
Planes, trains, water supplies, nuclear power, prescription medications—these are all essential to our lives and to go about without a realization of the risk and a determination to achieve cybersecurity is to ignore incalculable consequences.
Will we ever be able to catch up to the risk?
It will be a constant, continual race. There will not be a day we are caught up. The nature of cyber space is transnational and it is as deep as it is wide. There are no absolute guarantees and even if we think we have something secure today that security may not be there tomorrow.
How can we begin to tackle these unprecedented vulnerabilities?
We know now that growth and security are related and I think we can start with some fundamental practices toward cybersecurity. Oftentimes we are making it too easy for hackers.
Thankfully, this has become a board-level issue and companies are performing audit of security in an attempt to calculate some of these risks. But it’s very, very complicated.
The insurance industry can play a huge, huge role and provide a great national benefit in requiring clients to maintain standards. And the insurance industry can help set those standards.
Chad Hemenway is Managing Editor of Advisen News. He has more than 15 years of journalist experience at a variety of online, daily, and weekly publications. He has covered P&C insurance news since 2007, and he has experience writing about all P&C lines as well as regulation and litigation. Chad won a Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Single Article in 2014 for his coverage of the insurance implications of traumatic brain injuries and Best News Coverage in 2013 for coverage of Superstorm Sandy. Contact Chad at 212.897.4824 or [email protected].
