Global insurance broker Aon on Monday revealed that it’s investigating a cyber incident impacting some of its systems.
In a brief statement submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Aon said it detected a cyber incident on February 25. The investigation conducted until the SEC was notified showed that only a “limited number of systems” were impacted.
“The incident has not had a significant impact on the Company’s operations,” Aon said.“Although the Company is in the early stages of assessing the incident, based on the information currently known, the Company does not expect the incident to have a material impact on its business, operations or financial condition.”
Aon provides risk, insurance, reinsurance, retirement, and health solutions. The company has roughly 50,000 employees across 120 countries and an annual revenue of more than $10 billion.
Many of these types of disclosures are triggered by ransomware attacks, but that does not appear to be the case.
Aon has not shared any additional details about the incident in its SEC filing, but the company told SecurityWeek that this was not a ransomware attack — there was no encryption of files and the breach did not involve any other type of malware. At this stage in its investigation, the company has no concrete evidence of specific data being impacted.
“The cyberattack on AON is a warning sign to every insurance company that they are a popular target to threat actors. The valuable data held by insurance companies is an attractive target for cyber criminals, which means that the industry has to make sure that they implement solutions which prevents data from being breached,” Sam Linford, VP Channel & MSSP EMEA at Deep Instinct, said via email.
“AON were able to limit the impact of the attack to a few systems due to acting quickly and having a response method in place. Attacks on the insurance industry can have a significant impact on both customers and employees due to the highly sensitive data they hold. Therefore, insurance organisations must ensure that they have a cybersecurity solution which can stop the possibility of their data being stolen.”
Several major insurance companies disclosed cybersecurity incidents last year, including AXA, CNA, and Pan-American Life.
*updated with information that the incident did not involve ransomware
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Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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