Shirbit's financial report published on Sunday reveals the severity of the damage caused by the cyber breach

Insurance company Shirbit's financial report published on Sunday reveals the severity of the damage caused by the cyber breach to the company. NIS 26 million in 2019. The impact on profitability, among other things, was due to the company's inability to renew insurance policies throughout December following the shutdown of the company's servers.
On November 20, hacker companies called BLACK SHADOWS hacked into the servers of the insurance company Shirbit in what was defined as the most serious cyber event the country has ever known. The hackers not only contented themselves with encrypting the data and stealing it, but also tried to blackmail the company by threatening to make it public - which was in fact done in smaller amounts than expected.
Apart from the direct losses from the break-in, four class actions totaling NIS 1.2 billion have been filed against the company to date. The lawsuits filed claim that the company did not address the issues of information security in accordance with its duty and abandoned the privacy of its customers and thus contributed to the disclosure of information on a large scale and with a high level of sensitivity. In addition, the company chose to save on cyber security costs at the expense of its insureds and managed the event with a lack of transparency. The four applications are in the initial stages. At this stage, the facts have not yet been fully clarified and it has not yet been decided which of the applications will be examined in detail in court and the company's legal advisers are unable to assess their chances of being accepted yet.
An essential part of its activity is car insurance for state employees, and for many years it has been one of the winners in the tender that the state publishes every year. According to the report, 25% of the company's compulsory car and property insurance is taken out through group insurance and large factories.
The company's premiums in 2020 amounted to NIS 453 million, compared with NIS 532 million in 2019, a decrease of 15%. In the fourth quarter, in which the break-in took place at the company's servers, the company's premiums decreased to NIS 91.5 million, a decrease of 8% compared to the corresponding quarter.
The Phoenix is ​​currently in talks to acquire the insurance company Shirbit. Shirbit was founded in 2000, and is wholly owned by Yigal Rabnoff. Rabnoff demands NIS 100 million for the company. The Phoenix apparently offers only between NIS 60 and 70 million. This is due to the fear that the hack into the company's servers could harm the company's future operations.