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Cyber Liability Insurance

Data breaches are becoming more and more common, meaning that you need to take precautions to protect your business. Cowell, James and Forge Insurance Group can offer you a solution.

Cyber liability insurance provided by Cowell James Forge Insurance Group.

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Avoid Getting Hacked

Have you ever thought about getting cyber liability insurance coverage? If not, you need to start thinking about it, as well as information like who needs cyber liability insurance, what is cyber liability insurance and cyber liability insurance cost. These are all important facts to have before you can commit to a policy and avoid your business getting hacked.

It is there to help you when you are facing a data breach lawsuit, but there is more than meets the eye, and some policies offer more than you might think at first.

What Is Covered?

Anything that is associated with a cyber hack is going to be covered under a policy like this. If you find the right kind of policy, you will also notice that sometimes they cover the loss of earnings while you have had to shut down if your systems are unavailable or compromised. All expenses that occur because of a cyber attack will be covered under a policy like this. If you are lucky and you find the right provider, you might be able to get coverage against inadvertently breaching another person’s copyright.

What Happens After A Cyber Attack?

When the cyber attack is over, what is left? Your network security was compromised and now they may engage in cyber extortion. As soon as the attack has happened, you need to spring into action and make sure you are taking the necessary steps. Some of the things that you need to do are as follows:

  • Deal with cyber extortion attempts – you can speak to the police about this if you would like to
  • Notifying customers, both those who have and haven’t been affected by the situation, that there has been a breach
  • Pay damages to those people who are out of money or hurt because of the data breach that happened on your watch
  • Get your business website back up and running as soon as possible in the hopes that you can return to some kind of normal
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Cyber Liability
Cyber Liability Coverage
Risk Factor

The Internet has spun a whole new web of liability exposures. E-commerce, social networking, cloud storage, and other technologies bring great benefits to large and small businesses alike. But with these benefits also come challenges, including protection of privacy, data, and financial information of your customers. If this information is lost, stolen, or compromised, your company is at risk. In fact, you may even be required by law to alert those impacted by the breach and to pay for any financial loss incurred.

Solution

Cyber liability coverage offers protection due to unauthorized access of electronic data or software within your network. It also provides coverage for spreading a virus, computer theft, extortion, or any unintentional act, mistake, error, or omission made by an employee. This coverage is quickly becoming more and more important as you embrace technology to help run your business.

First-Party Coverage
Risk Factor

If your company is faced with a data breach or cyber-attack, you may be forced to cover breach-related expenses such as crisis management, hiring a public relations firm to manage a data breach incident, costs associated with forensic analysis, the cost of repairing and restoring computer systems if there is a virus that destroys business software and data, and the loss of business income resulting from a data breach.

Solution

First-party coverage will insure your business for losses to your own data or lost income or for other harm to your business resulting from a data breach or cyber-attack. This coverage will pay you for things like business interruption, the cost of notifying customers of a breach, and even the expense of hiring a public relations firm to repair any damage done to your image as a result of a cyber-attack. Having this funding available in the event of a crippling hack can keep the lights on till you’re able to resume your normal business operations.

Business Income
Risk Factor

What would you do if an email virus impacted the operation of your database and prevented you from serving clients for a day or more? Or what if a hacker or cyber-criminal caused a system outage or extended downtime, leaving your business inoperable? These and other events can destroy your ability to serve clients and bring in revenue, which can have a major long-term impact on the viability of your business.

Solution

Business interruption insurance compensates you for lost income if your company cannot operate as normal due to disaster-related damage that is covered under your commercial property insurance policy, such as data breach or cyber-attack. Business income insurance covers the revenue you would have earned, based on your financial records, had the disaster not occurred. The policy also covers operating expenses, like electricity, that continue even though business activities have come to a temporary halt.

Third-Party Coverage
Risk Factor

If your business handles sensitive customer data (such as email lists, credit card records or other files), data breaches pose a serious threat to your financial stability. A lawsuit resulting from a data breach means your business is responsible for paying legal fees, court-ordered judgments or settlements and other court-related costs.

Solution

Third-party coverage protects you in the event of a lawsuit brought by a customer or partner for a data breach that your business' actions or negligence allowed.

Regulatory Claim Coverage
Risk Factor

If your business experiences a data breach or violation of confidential information during regular business operations, you may be found in violation of privacy laws and be required to pay fines for the violations or other regulatory issues.

Solution

You may be eligible for regulatory claim coverage which would offer protection in response to proceedings related to disclosure laws and other governmental actions that can result in defense costs, fines and/or penalties. Coverage does vary and may be restricted by local law.

Ransom Coverage
Risk Factor

If hackers gain control of critical systems, they may demand a ransom be paid to avoid additional consequences. Sometimes these can be empty threats, but it’s impossible to know for sure. Paying the ransom can be costly. Taking a chance by choosing not to pay can sometimes put a company out of business.

Solution

Coverage for ransom and cyber extortion can be included in cyber liability policies and can help cover the cost of ransom to regain control of network systems. This is often not included in a standard policy, may include a separate sublimit and deductible, and may require adherence to certain conditions set forth by the insurer.

How Much Does It Cost?

This is going to largely depend on the cover that you want. Like we have mentioned above, there are different add ons and extras that you can get and these will push the price of the policy up. Even without the extras, it is still impossible to tell how much it is going to cost as it will be based on your individual business needs and requirements. To be able to provide an accurate quote, you are going to need some basic details about your business, how much risk you think your business is at etc.

Who Needs Cyber Liability Insurance?

Anyone who uses computer systems for their business should consider investing in cyber liability insurance. The reason for this is that you never know when a hack could be coming, and sometimes even with the best planning and strategy in place, they will get through to your business. You should have an IT team working to avoid this happening, and if something does go wrong, they know how to fix it without allowing them to steal any of the data on your clients.

If they do manage to steal your clients data and data from your business, then cyber liability insurance could be the only thing standing between you and going bankrupt. Data breach lawsuits are hugely expensive due to the sensitive information that they are about.

Going Above And Beyond For Cyber Liability

It’s not just financially that cyber liability insurance comes in handy. When you are going through all the information about your business, one of the questions you are going to be asked is about the defenses that you use for your business. They will then point out some of the weak spots in your cyber security that you can improve on before signing the contract. This means that your business is going to be covered both financially and in terms of keeping your business safe.

Contact Us

If you want to know more about cyber liability insurance, or you would like a free quote for your business, feel free to get in touch with us. A member of our team will be more than happy to provide you the information that you are looking for.

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