Fear of cyber warfare and technology issues joined pandemics, large-scale natural catastrophes and concerns about food, water and energy shortages as the top five long-term risks for the insurance industry, a Towers Watson & Co. study concludes.

The study, “Extreme Risks 2013,” placed pandemics first, catastrophes second, shortages third, cyber warfare fourth and other technology issues fifth.

Economic depression, the threat of a banking crisis, supply chain failures, a rise in extreme weather events and the possibility of a sovereign default rounded out the top 10.

“Much as we would have expected pandemics and natural catastrophes to figure prominently in insurers' extreme risk thinking, the high rankings of concerns such as cyber warfare and a major data compromise in the cloud illustrate how the industry is keeping up to date with risk assessment,” Stephen Lowe, senior consultant of risk consulting and software at Towers Watson, said Tuesday in a statement.

Nonetheless, the report notes that in addition to identifying these risks, it is important for the insurance industry to figure out their correlations and interdependencies.

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“These extreme risks are not entirely independent,” according to the report. “There is a significant clustering of associated risks within the financial and economic categories, which should not be surprising.”

The analysis argues that in addition to traditional risk mitigation techniques, insurers and risk managers should consider conducting 'premortem' exercises that simulate extreme risk events.

“While a post-mortem seeks to establish the cause of death, premortems are about trying to determine in advance what could, colloquially, kill you,” according to the analysis, which is based on an online survey to which Towers Watson applied a scoring system. “We believe that being adept at premortems means you are a better risk manager, and can react more flexibly in the event of an extreme event happening, particularly as the event is unlikely to evolve precisely along the lines predicted.”