A report by Lloyd’s of London revealed that a cyber issue that temporarily shuts down a top cloud computing provider in the United States could trigger US$19billion in losses.

The report found that a cyber incident affecting one of the top-three cloud service providers for three to six days could result in the firm losing between US$5.3billion and US$19billion.

Furthermore, it examined potential losses that depend on cloud computing in the event that cyber incidents “completely disrupt” US cloud service to all of a provider’s customers, according to Reuters.

Lloyd’s stated in the report: “As the cyber insurance market grows rapidly, the distribution of risk will have to be monitored carefully.”

The report also found that smaller companies are more likely to rely on the cloud, despite them being less likely to have cyber insurance.

Written by Leah Alger