In a town hall meeting held last Friday afternoon, the University of Calgary made an announcement, urging other institutions to secure cyber insurance.
The school was recently a victim of a malware attack that held valuable academic data hostage. To recover the withheld data, the University of Calgary paid $20,000 in ransom money.
University vice president of finance and services Linda Dalgetty said that while the school purchased cyber insurance last year, it did not cover for the ransom. The insurance product, however, proved “invaluable” in another instance.
Only hours after the school had purchased the insurance, the academy experienced a phishing attack.
"It was quite interesting, we made the decision to buy it, it went live on I think a Friday morning at 12:01 a.m., and our first phishing attack was at 2 a.m. that day, so it was very coincidental," Dalgetty recalled.
Dalgetty underscored the importance of cyber insurance, particularly with the ubiquity of intrusive software such as malware, worms, spyware, and computer viruses.
"In fact one of my messages coming out of this to my peers, both in Alberta and across Canada, is this is a good thing for you to have," she said. "And again not just becasue it's that monetary recovery, it's the value that we had from helping us going through a difficult time with this malware crisis."
Dalgetty disclosed that she only knows of two other major universities in the country that have purchase cyber insurance.
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