Technology is becoming increasingly important for businesses, organisations and charities to successfully operate. The world is
full of cyber threats that target businesses of all sizes, in every industry and can impact your finances, disrupt your operations
and tarnish your reputation. The value of a robust cyber insurance policy will only continue to grow.
If your organisation experiences IT failure or a cyber-attack that disrupts your business operations, your policy could cover you for income lost during this interruption as well as increased costs in the aftermath.
You may suffer a cyber breach where your data is accessed and/ or stolen by an unauthorised person. You will need to secure the breach, notify the people affected and cover any privacy infringement claims and associated legal costs, which your policy could cover.
In a report by SonicWall, the UK has been the biggest target for ransomware and other malicious cyber attacks which attempt to seize control of, and withhold access to, your data until a fee is paid. Your policy could cover you if you suffer one of these attacks.
In the event that your organisation’s digital assets are lost, corrupted or altered in any way by a cyber-criminal, your policy could help cover the costs involved with replacing them.
In the event that a libel, slander, defamation or infringement of intellectual property rights claim is brought against your organisation as a result of your digital media presence, your policy could step in.
This will provide your organisation with near-immediate 24/7 support from cyber-specialists following a hack or data breach to help identify the weaknesses in your system and identify what exactly has happened.
Your policy could help fund a reputation recovery team to provide positive exposure for your business after a cyber attack.
Criminals use tricks to deceive and manipulate individuals into giving out confidential information and funds. This is a growing issue but a cyber liability policy or separate crime insurance policy can help to protect you from suffering from these incidents.
1. A medium-sized law firm’s network was hacked. Sensitive client information was potentially at risk including; a public company’s acquisition target, another public company’s prospective patent technology, the draft prospectus of a venture capital client, and a number of class-action lists containing plaintiffs’ personally identifiable information. The firm then received a call requesting £25,000 to not sell the information on the black market. The law firm had to contact their cyber insurers, an incident response manager was assigned, and IT forensic investigators and legal counsel were brought in to address the incident.
| Defence and settlement costs for class action lawsuits |
£100,000 |
|
Incident Response Expenses - Forensic investigations - Cost to set up an operate a call centre for enquiries - Public relations expert fees to minimise reputational impact - Legal Consultation fees - Incident Response Manager fees |
£44,000 £8,000 £12,000 £28,000 £8,000 |
|
Cyber Extortion - Crisis negotiator fees - Legal consultation fees - Information technology consultant fees - Extortion payment |
£4,000 £2,000 £22,000 £25,000 |
| Total Cost | £243,000 |
2. In another case we have seen, the General Manager of a local business was on holiday and his emails were hacked. The hacker sent an email to the General Manager’s assistant asking for an urgent payment for £10,000 to be made to one of their suppliers, detailing the account number and sort code needed. The assistant had no reason to believe that this wasn’t a genuine request and proceeded to make the payment to the hackers account. This business did not have a suitably robust cyber policy with a crime extension so were left with a £10,000 loss to cover themselves.
