A new industry survey underscores how companies aren’t yet adequately covering their information technology risks, even as as cyber vulnerabilities rapidly become more costly and serious.

Among the bigger findings: companies are getting insurance coverage to protect 12 percent of their information technology assets, versus 51 percent of tangible property assets, even though both often have compatible value.

Put a different way, information technology assets are 39 percent more exposed then property assets on a relative value to insurance protection basis, according to the survey conducted by the Ponemon institute and sponsored by Aon plc, an insurance and reinsurance broker and consulting firm.

The study is based on a survey of more than 2,200 companies in close to 40 countries. Aon said the results show cyber-related insurance coverage for companies hasn’t yet caught up with the growing need, and that client awareness of how bad cyber problem have become needs improvement.

“The explosion of cloud computing, mobile devices, big data, analytics and the Internet of Things is creating enterprise risk management issues that are rapidly growing with the increased use of information assets and technology,” Kevin Kalinich, global practice leader for cyber/network risk at Aon Risk Solutions, said in prepared remarks. “Companies large and small are advised to consider cyber threats in this perspective.”

Other findings in the survey:

• 50 percent said their company would disclose loss of property, plant and equipment in its financial statements.
• 34 percent asserted that information asset losses don’t require disclosure.
• 52 percent said their companies’ cyber risk exposure will grow over the next two years.
• 19 percent said their company has cyber insurance coverage.
• 37 percent of surveyed companies dealt with a material or “significantly disruptive” security problem or data breach one or more times over the last two years. The average economic impact: $2.1 million.
• Expectations are that the projected growth in the use of Internet-connected devices will grow from 10 billion to 50 billion over the next 5 years.

Source: Aon plc