Protecting your physical assets is always a great investment for any business, but are you protecting your data and digital assets? Data breaches have become an increasing problem for businesses of all sizes, either from malicious attacks or a lack of adequate digital coverage and protection. Moody Insurance Agency provides solutions for small business insurance plans, educational institution insurance, and so much more.
About 70% of all cybercrime attacks were phishing and network intrusions1, leading to sensitive data and information leaving the business and potentially being compromised. This breach in cybersecurity can lead to unnecessarily high costs, with the average business in the United States paying over $8.5 million in 2020 as a result of a data breach.2
This may lead you to ask, what is cyber liability insurance and how will it protect my business?
What is cyber liability insurance coverage?
Cyber liability insurance coverage helps businesses reduce financial risk when dealing in online transactions, protecting information central to the business’ practice like historical records and employee information, protecting sensitive customer information, and other principles of data and cyber security.
The cyber liability insurance definition may change as it is passed on to your provider and coverage plan. Be sure to communicate with your provider to fully understand the service.
How Cyber Liability Insurance Coverage Protects Businesses
After an attack, businesses can react quicker with cyber insurance as the policy can cover or help pay for a variety of services to ensure your business, employees, and customers are protected and in good hands.
There are different types of coverages, with first-party cyber insurance covering risks to your company’s data and cyber health. Third-party cyber insurance covers lawsuits and legal matters pertaining to cyber risks.
Check with your provider to understand their cyber liability insurance definition and what services are provided with your plan.
First-Party Coverage:
- Notification to Customers and Employees
- Data Monitoring
- Hiring a Team to Investigate
- Repairing Damaged Cyber-Systems
- Recovering Data
Third-Party Coverage:
Notification to Customers and Employees
In the case of an emergency, such as a data breach, you should have a plan in place. A tenant to cyber insurance coverage is designing and building an emergency plan that suits your business and customers. The coverage will allow for a hasty response to inform those most at risk from a team specialized in a notification.
Customers and employees trust sensitive information to companies, and companies should honor and respect this trust by being able to accurately detect a breach and timely enact an appropriate response.
Data Monitoring
Data is central to all business activities; it helps guide decisions for the future and assure quality service. With cyber liability insurance coverage, the cost of a team to monitor can be covered or drastically reduced based on your plan. Data monitoring is essential to cyber security, as the team can be responsible for detecting any kind of attack and expediting the subsequent process.
The team can monitor data such as:
- Virus Detection and Cyber Health
- Financial Records and History
- Credit Card and Bank Account Information
- Identifying Customer Information
- Sensitive Employee Information
- And other specified information
Hiring a Team to Investigate
It is important to understand how an attack occurs and how it can be prevented in the future. This is a daunting task for an IT department and can take an exorbitant amount of time as they are managing other tasks. Cyber liability insurance coverage helps alleviate this problem by affording a skilled team to conduct research on their time.
Allowing an outside team to investigate removes the internal stress of delegating employee time away from central tasks. A specialized team is able to draw on past experience to diagnose the breach and create appropriate solutions in a timely fashion.
Hiring an external team helps:
- Expedite Investigation
- Internal Team Resume Normal Activities
- Alleviate Stress at the Business
- Improve Cybersecurity for the Future
Repairing Damaged Cyber-Systems
A cyber attack can severely limit a cyber system and prevent normal business operations. It is important to repair any damages to resume normal activities and be able to respond to current and future threats. An external team can be hired to assess the damages and enact the appropriate repairs. A repaired system allows for an understanding of the breach and builds knowledge of how to respond in the event of a future attack.
Recovering Data
After an attack, data could be damaged or be used as a ransom. Trust that your insurance coverage can restore and obtain your data to allow for a normal and protected workflow to resume. Data restoration can be an expensive process, but an insurance plan can help alleviate costs and ensure a quality restoration to promote operational efficiency. Data can be used for financial gain by hackers as they hold data at a ransom. This can also be an expensive endeavor, but an insurance plan can expedite this process and cover the demand quickly.
Recovering data quickly allows:
- Business operations to resume
- Protection of the integrity of the business
- Promotion of confidence from customers
Legal Defense Fees
A data breach can feel like a fracture in trust between a business and its clients. As a result, a lawsuit could be filed in regard to a failure to adequately prevent a data breach and protect customer information. In this case, the coverage plan can help fund a defense team to represent the business and proceed in legal matters. Customers may view the company to be negligent or have liability in the attack, and thus a legal team would be necessary for the company’s best interests.
A legal team helps:
- Represent the company in a lawsuit
- Protect the integrity of the business
- Investigate the attack
Settlements
Legal litigation can be a lengthy and expensive process, and without an insurance plan can prove to be expensive and damaging to the business. A cyber coverage plan can help provide resources to quell litigation through settlements. An appropriate sum of money will be necessary for a settlement, and an insurance plan can help provide the resources necessary to come to an appropriate settlement.
Legal Advice Expenses
Legal representation is important for any business in or outside the courtroom. Legal advice helps businesses prepare for future litigation and help prevent future legal actions. Cyber litigation insurance coverage grants access to sought-after legal advice by helping fund the resource. The advice can be used retro or proactively to ensure your business is legally protected and represented.
How Moody Insurance Agency can Help You
Let Moody Insurance help you with your insurance needs, stay updated on federal and state employment laws and we can help answer the question, why is business life insurance necessary for your company?
Learn more about Moody Insurance and Contact Us today to answer, what is cyber liability insurance coverage, and find a plan that works for your business.
Resources:
1https://www.statista.com/statistics/293256/cyber-crime-attacks-experienced-by-us-companies/
2https://www.statista.com/statistics/273575/average-organizational-cost-incurred-by-a-data-breach/