Your system is breached by hackers and all records, including sensitive information, is stolen and put on the dark web. Subsequently, you get sued by your clients for leaking their data.
One of your employees gets a text message from who he believes is the CFO. The person is asking him to transfer money to their account. The number is spoofed. Rather than calling the CFO to verify he wires $25,000 to an account in the message.
Your client gets an email with invoice attached that he thinks is from your company for services you actually did provide. He pays it only to find out a hacker got into your system, created the fake email and invoice, and had the money transferred to a new account
Your website has been taken down by hackers. The only way to get it back is to pay them $100,000 in bitcoin.
Would you be covered? Would you have enough coverage?
Insurance isn’t always simple.
Having an independent agent on your side means you have a policy catered specifically for your home and all of the things you love in it. And as your needs change, we can change right along with you.
What is Cyber Liability Insurance?:
Cyber Liability Insurance comes in the form of either a separate policy or can sometimes be added to your existing business insurance policy.
Cyber insurance can offer coverages to help protect your business from various electronic related threats. Threats such as data breach, lawsuits from breach of contract or negligent protection of data, cyber extortion, and cyber business interruption.
Who needs Cyber Liability Insurance?
The easier question to ask is who doesn’t need this type of coverage. Businesses nowadays rely more and more on the cloud, the internet, and their computer infrastructure. If you process or store customers or employees Personally Identifiable Information (PII) then you are in need of Cyber Liability Insurance. If your business has proprietary intellectual property then you should probably have Cyber Liability Coverage.
What does Cyber Liability Insurance Cover?:
Cyber Liabilities policies typically include 1st and 3rd Party coverages.
- 1st Party Coverage: Covers the costs associated with an attack or security breach of personal, non-public information of employees or customers. This includes: notification costs to communicate with affected individuals and businesses, IT Forensic costs to determine what information was compromised and how, credit monitoring services for all parties affected, and crisis management costs for media relations and reputation management campaigns.
- 3rd Party Coverage: Covers damages if your partners or customers are affected by a breach of confidential information on your system. Confidential information can include social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account info, email addresses, health information, dates of birth, and private business information. Failure to protect this Personally Identifiable Information (PII) can result in hefty fines or lawsuits.
Additional Coverages which can be found on a Cyber Liability policy:
- Cyber Crime: Covers monetary losses related to social engineering, reverse social engineering, and funds transfer fraud. Social engineering is when someone uses electronic means to impersonate your client, vendor, or employee to deceive your company into transferring or delivering financial assets. Reverse social engineering is when a cybercriminal uses your computer system to deceive your client or vendor into transferring money intended for you to another person or entity.
- Cyber Extortion: helps cover the amount you paid if an online crime occurs in which hackers take your business’ data, computer system, website, or other sensitive information and holds it hostage until you pay a ransom. Many times hackers use Ransomware to block you from accessing your own data.
- Cyber Business Interruption: If you rely on your website or network to run your business and it’s directly tied to sales, this is an important coverage to have on your cyber policy. For instance, an online flower store is hacked and the website is completely taken down. It’s mothers day week and no one can place any orders. If they had Cyber Business Interruption coverage they would be reimbursed for any lost income due to the cyber attack.