Cyber Insurance

Do you own a business that sells products through e-commerce or do you store customers and employee records and information electronically? Perhaps you work in a not for profit organization that has electronic storage technology.   If you haven’t already purchased Cyber Insurance, it’s important that you take the time to look into this specialized insurance product with the full intention to buy as an investment in protecting your business.Cyber Insurance has been around for ten years and offers coverage for liability and property losses from a breach in a company’s or organization’s internal electronic network, or electronic activities through cyber-attacks such as:

• Data breach

• Phishing attack

• Breach on social media accounts

• Cyber extortion

Cyber theft is a separate crime that requires liability insurance as your current commercial policy may not cover these type of losses.Consider the expenses involved in a data breach:

• Investigation and remediation

• Cost of recovering from a security breach

• Legal expenses

• Regulatory fines

• Incident management (expenses related to the management of an incident)

• Notification costs - the cost of notifying customers of the breach

• Lawsuits

• Business interruption (your website is disabled, and you can’t take orders)

• Credit monitoring

• Loss resulting from ID theft

Another consideration is a loss of reputation of the company because of the failure to keep people’s sensitive information safe.The reality is there are risks involved when doing business over the internet and storing information electronically.  The risk is higher if you have not implemented best practices regarding security controls for your website, social media accounts and information technology storage.As an example click here to read LinkedIn’s 2012 data breach where a hacker stole encrypted passwords from the site to sell on the dark web.You might be shocked at a number of Cyber attacks that occur around the world.  Check out the Norse website to view life attacks in real time.  It’s like a scene from the movie War Games!Be sure to review your existing commercial insurance policy to see what your policy covers and contact us to speak to one of our brokers about Cyber Insurance.