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CyberCube's analysis of the Amazon Web Services outage enables a greater understanding of the evolution of cyber threats

Analysis of the technical aspects of AWS denial of service attack and its potential implications on insurers' portfolios. 

  • 1 Minute Read

We recently updated our clients on some of the technical aspects of October's Amazon Web Services (AWS) denial of service attack and the implications this event might have on how our clients assess these types of incidents in their portfolios. 

John Anderson, a Client Services Manager at CyberCube, summarised in a video interview what happened when attackers were successful in causing an eight-hour interruption to AWS’ service. He shared his thoughts on why this matters from a cyber insurance perspective: the event demonstrated how complex a technology outage can be, and how certain defense systems and controls can fail and actually amplify the effects of an attack - as opposed to mitigating them.

So what was CyberCube’s response to the event? As John highlights, immediately following the breaking news, the CyberCube team sprung into action. Straight away, team members socialized the event, cybersecurity analysts attempted to identify the root cause and mapped this to the company’s understanding of AWS’ technology. Economists and actuaries worked in tandem to understand the costs of the event and ensure that the company’s modeling capabilities were calibrated to anticipate such an event and calculate it appropriately.

Today, additional research continues, as the CyberCube team perpetually refines its analytics capability and understanding of the evolving cyber threat. We send our clients regular updates on systemic cyber events like the AWS attack and deliver education from domain experts on developing threat intelligence trends. 

To find out more about the advantages of being a CyberCube customer, contact us via our website www.cybcube.com

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