Businesses may have to insure their online assets and data against attacks from hackers to avoid corporate governance scandals, warn experts.

Specialist insurer Hiscox says fewer than five per cent of its larger customers are taking the threat of hacking seriously and insuring their assets accordingly.

Stephen Wares, manager of UK technology in the company's aerospace, technology, media and telecoms division says complacency and lack of risk analysis is causing a reluctance to view digital assets in the same way as physical assets.

'The organisations we are looking to insure are not those that say we've got the latest and greatest security product, they're the ones with the culture of understanding and identifying risk,' he said.

'Hacking and security has to be identified as a significant risk at board level. It has to be a corporate governance issue. It may be that there needs to be a major corporate governance issue to hit the radar and get the cheque books out,' he said.

Wares says the company has seen an increase in extortion and hacking-based blackmail targeting online businesses, in line with trends witnessed by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (Computing, 26 February).