London, 15th May 2017 – The industrial-scale global cyber-attacks with 200,000 victims across 150 nations including Britain’s National Health Service and the Russian Federation’s Interior Ministry were no freak coincidence.

 
That’s the startling claim from UK-based Russell Group which provides software and services to the global insurance industry.
 
The NHS breach - one which shrewd risk analysis should have foreseen - demonstrates the power of a new threat to businesses and governments which Russell Group calls ‘Connected Risk’. 
 
Both organisations and governments will have to adapt to this new risk landscape, one where ‘risk drivers’ like orchestrated cyber ransom demands can affect both state entities and companies at multiple levels.
 
Russell Group Managing Director Suki Basi says that organisations are more connected across industries, cultures and territories than ever before so are more susceptible to rapid risk contagion.
 
He says: ‘Organisations need to boost their software upgrades to bolster defences against such risks, while governments need to accelerate the process of regulation in an increasingly vulnerable connected world.
 
According to Russell Group, the risk of a concerted malware assault across a wide range of industries and countries could have been better assessed using state-of-the-art scenario modelling and is a classic case of an ‘unexpected’ event.
  
Russell Group deploys its proprietary analytics to the world’s major underwriters and corporate risk managers, giving them multiple event scenarios to help accurate risk assessments and pricing across the speciality insurance classes, including product liability.  
 
‘The future risk landscape will be one riddled with complexity. Russell Group believe now is the time for people to invest in a risk modelling software that allows governments and companies to understand their connected risk exposures,’ Basi adds.

Note to Editors

Russell Group is a leading risk management software and services company fast expanding its operations globally. Through its ALPS suite of products, Russell Group provides a truly integrated risk analysis framework for insurance, reinsurance and corporate clients operating across multiple industries and geographies. 

Russell Group helps its clients generate clearer risk insights and assessments, robust capital utilisation and improved portfolio return on equity. 

As a pioneering UK-based data analytics company, Russell Group offers clients proprietary technology that factors in the realistic, probabilistic and unexpected for better scenario modelling to give more accurate pricing in assessing and managing connected risk. 

*For media enquiries contact rbrown@russell.co.uk or call +44 (0)794 9922 12. Also contact, cdon@russell.co.uk or call +44 (0) 7939 590084