Robert Barberi

Despite an increase in both the frequency and severity of cyber losses, the cyber insurance marketplace remained favorable to buyers in 2025. While the market hardened in 2020 following the emergence of more sophisticated and costly ransomware attacks, competitive conditions have prevailed since 2022, driving year‑over‑year premium reductions. This trend continued through 2025, even as underlying cyber risk intensified.

As we predicted last year at this time, 2025 was a year of relative stability in the financial and executive lines marketplace. Although there was quite a bit of noise and shifting claims trends, overall premiums were generally steady. We see 2026 as much the same. This will be a year where the overall premium trend will be flat to slight increases, but also a good opportunity to consider additional coverages or limits.

Cyber attacks targeting the oil and gas industry have been in sharp focus since the Colonial Pipeline incident of 2021. More recently, ransomware campaigns have impacted major players like Halliburton, Hitachi Energy and PVC-MS, leading to network outages, data breaches and extortion demands. In Europe, another campaign affected 22 firms after hackers exploited a command injection vulnerability, launching targeted DDoS attacks.