Cyber Insurance – Ouch!

Cyber Insurance – Ouch!

I recently sat in on an industry-specific presentation about Cyber Insurance. We get a lot of questions about this, and the presenter was with the insurance company! Thought I’d share some info.

According to CHUB, Small Businesses under $25 million in revenue are THE target and ransomware was the top Cyber Insurance claim category in Q1 of 2020. These claims have increased 486% in the last 3 years. Insurance premium rate increases are between 20% and 50% upon renewals.

Errors & Omissions—Protects you from liabilities resulting from your mistake or failure.

First Party Cyber Coverage—covers damages due to a data breach; this can include investigative services, business interruption, and data recovery

Third-party coverage— covers damages if your customer or partners are affected by a cyber-attack on your business including legal fees, settlement costs, security failure, and media liabilities.

If you want the insurance company to pay a claim, there are some new requirements in these policies: a Firewall with up-to-date firmware; End-point management (anti-virus and regular patches); backups that run without human intervention and are not connected to the network; multi-factor authentication is another we’ve seen.

You should be proactive with your computers and data, and continue to educate and warn your staff just to protect your business, your livelihood. Given this onslaught of hacker attempts, you should also get with your trusted insurance agent and get clarity on what policies cover which situations. Then bring the requirements to your tech group (us!) so we can talk through what you do and don’t have, and if there was a claim, how we would show you were compliant.

Don’t like having these additional premiums? We’re with you, but you absolutely won’t like paying a ransom, or losing your data if you’re compromised. We have a ‘fun’ image on the reception-area screen when you come into our office. It’s a knight in full armor and a caption about having the latest security protection software. The picture to the right shows an arrow through the small visibility slit of the helmet that says ‘user clicked on link.’ Get all of this in place, then be sure to keep sharing our articles, links, and warnings ! – CMW