Make 2016 the year you get Cyber Liability Insurance

Your Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is often responsible for the administration of your corporate insurance. But in order for them to be effective, they need to have the right broker.

The right broker will not only help your CFO address the company’s known insurance needs, they will also help you identify emerging risks or opportunities. A friend of Quincy CFO, Michael Cronin, a Business Insurance Consultant and Vice President at The Insurance Exchange, Inc. in Rockville; is more than an insurance broker. He will take the time to do the legwork to understand your company and help you and your CFO, through the maze of corporate insurance – an ever-changing world.
 

Below Mike explains Cyber Liability Insurance, including what you need to know, and why you should consider it for your company:

To start off, EVERYONE has some exposure to “cyber liability;” it goes beyond electronic data and covers paper documents. The insurance marketplace has adapted to demands by broadening coverage to provide a more comprehensive policy to protect all the personal data a business handles on daily basis. The goal is to protect the personal identity of employees and clients no matter what media is being utilized.

I don’t know of a single company that doesn’t have, at least their employee data stored on paper or electronically.

If this info was released what would you do? You would need to be able to identify what information was compromised, remediate the issue, notify those affected, and offer (at minimum) the statutory regulated credit monitoring?

And that’s just the first step. Do you have employees in multiple states? Then you need to figure out EACH states regulations and make sure you comply with each one of them. What a pain! After all of that, you will also have to answer the regulatory bodies such as HIPPA, ERISA, SEC, PCI Security, etc. And this is what is required if you don’t get sued. Just imagine the defense costs if you have 50 affected clients in multiple states – YIKES!

In the event of a breach or alleged breach, a well written Cyber Policy would step in from day one to provide mitigation, remediation, notification, and most importantly defense costs. You would then have expert legal and security teams to help see you through the storm of regulations and indemnification.

It is often said that it is not a matter of if you will have a breach, but when. This is definitely coverage that every business should have, and have reviewed often.

But it is still a relatively new area for insurance, and insurance companies are all over the place on pricing and terms offered. As discussed in this article, almost everything is negotiable in a full-blown cyber liability policy.

Call me to make sure you have the coverage you need. We are a fully independent agency with access to every insurance company that writes cyber liability/network security coverage. We offer full benchmarking of your current program with exposure analysis - free of charge.  Michael Cronin, (301) 545-1579, Cronin.M@tie-inc.com.