By James Thaler

June 17 - (The Insurer) - Philadelphia Insurance Companies (PHLY) is offering flat renewal rates applied against exposure change on policies renewing through June 20 due to the ongoing disruption caused by its IT systems outage.

Market sources said PHLY in the coming days will announce whether the offer of flat renewals will be extended to July 1.

Cyber Risk Insurer was the first to report last week that PHLY had suffered a major ransomware attack beginning on June 9, with Scattered Spider identified by sources as behind the outage.

Scattered Spider is a term used by cybersecurity industry experts to track activities linked to a set of hacking tactics, techniques and procedures, particularly sophisticated social engineering.

PHLY is still in the process of getting staff back online from an outage that has now extended into its second week.

On Monday, Cyber Risk Insurer reported that PHLY is in the midst of a forensic investigation and has also been in contact with law enforcement after discovering unauthorized activity within its network last week.

Sources said that due to the recent cyber breach, PHLY is in the process of recredentialing all of the firm’s employees so they can resume their normal operations.

Those sources said PHLY is working to address critical core business functions first.

A spokesperson for PHLY did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When approached for comment on Tuesday afternoon, Cyber Risk Insurer received an automatic email reply stating that the company is “currently experiencing systems issues and will respond as soon as possible.”

It also provided separate phone numbers for brokers and agents to contact to bind coverage for new and renewal business as well for policyholders to initiate claims.

Separately on Tuesday, Erie Insurance said it now has control of its systems and sees “no evidence of ransomware” and “no indication of ongoing threat actor activity”, adding that it is working “around the clock” to restore access to staff and key stakeholders.

Erie provided the update in a statement to Cyber Risk Insurer, after this publication reported on Monday that the systems outage had extended into a 10th day after suffering a breach that began on June 7, in an attack also believed to have been carried out by Scattered Spider.

The update from Erie comes after a senior Google analyst on Monday said that the insurance industry “should be on high alert” for attacks by Scattered Spider.