Insurers and brokers are assessing widespread disruption believed to have been caused by an update from US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday, but the level of claims is not yet known.

“The outage was an international one, covering a large number of sectors, so it’s a significant event,” a spokesperson for Marsh told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“In terms of the size of potential claims in the global cyber insurance market, at this stage it’s too early to say what are the insurance ramifications.

“Clearly there is a potential for cyber insurance claims, cyber-contingent business interruption claims, and tech E&O claims. We are already working with clients to determine what their claims look like.”

The event was not a malicious cyberattack and is therefore classified as “system outage”, coverage of which varies.

“It depends on policy wording,” Marsh says. “System outage is not classed as a security issue and there are nuances in coverage.”

See Analysis.