Cyber attacks and data breach violations are becoming more common than ever. Many small to large-scale organizations fail to withstand these cyber-attacks and face huge financial losses.
Around 55% of small businesses faced cyber-attacks and data breaches, and 53% of them claim to face multiple breaches one after another. Small businesses are equally vulnerable to such attacks as large organizations.
These unstoppable breaches can ruin your business reliability and cause financial loss. Such attacks also put everyone in your business at high risk. The single smart approach to cope with such attacks is to get Cyber Insurance.
All Cyber Insurances keep their diversity, just like other insurance types. This article provides you a step-by-step procedure to select the right insurance after having a deep look at their policies and coverage but first, let us explain the term Cyber Insurance.
Cyber Insurance — Explained
Cyber Insurance is a kind of insurance policy for companies, corporations, and organizations to cover their liabilities in case of a cyber-attack, where sensitive information of the customers is compromised, such as Social Security numbers, account numbers, credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers, etc.
If we exclude the legal expenses and fees, then Cyber Insurance usually embraces the following elements. Your coverage also depends upon the cyber insurance service you buy, but this is a general coverage overview:
● Alerting Customers about the Cyber Attack or Breach
● Restoring Identities of Victims
● Recovery of breached Data.
● Repair and Recovery of Damaged Systems
Cyber Insurance Coverage
It’s mandatory to know the coverage patterns of the insurance you are buying. All cyber insurances do not offer the same type of coverage, and their strategies contrast as well.
Common Cyber Insurance providers cover the following angles:
Remediation Services: An instant response is required right after a breach, and remediation serves this purpose, and it includes a number of services such as forensic services, legal fees, customer notifying costs, PR services, credit monitoring, etc. Some insurers have response teams ready to cover the breach, which benefits smaller organizations to a large extent that have no dedicated security team.
Privacy Liability & Information Security: There are certain privacy-related claims and laws against security violations, and insurers tend to cover all these damage expenses. Investigation and Legal expenses are also covered in different coverage packages.
Regulatory Penalty Defense: All costs relating to regulatory actions are covered; these costs include fines, legal fees, penalties, investigative costs, etc.
Lost Revenue & Operability: The business interruption costs are covered along with the lost revenue of the organization to make it fully functional after the breach has passed. The lost revenue coverage is not instantly given, but insurers move to it slowly. Moreover, the business suspension costs do not apply to those businesses where the breach happened due to a third party or cloud vendor.
Media Liability: The insurer covers all media liabilities, including copyright infringement, plagiarism, libel, defamation, to prevent huge financial losses.
Cyber Extortion: If hackers try to negotiate with Ransomware attacks or recovery passwords, then all decryption, investigation, and recovery costs are to be covered by the insurer.
Coverage Selection
Cybersecurity insurances allow you to transfer cyber threat risk to any other insurance company that is held responsible for any data breach or attack on your business. Before you approve cybersecurity insurance for your company, it’s important to know what is included or excluded.
Every enterprise and organization operates in a different way, and they need to have personalized coverage selection criteria that suit the organization.
Selection Tips
The selection and overall review are needed prior to finalizing some Insurance plan, and these tips can assist you during the coverage selection process.
Involve Right Expertise: The right coverage strategy is made with professionals from different areas. These experts may belong to different areas such as IT management, legal counsel, risk management, and cybersecurity professionals.
Catalog your Data: You should specify the type of data your organization stores to check if it’s sensitive enough. Check if any security policies and regulations apply to this data. You should consider these points before making any choice.
Analyze Risk Scenarios: It is ideal for conducting yearly risk assessments for continuously analyzing any potential threats residing in your system. You can prioritize these cyber risks based on their intensity and transfer any potential threats that you do not intend to handle.
Research Insurer: All insurers do not offer coverage to the same extent. You should check the previous records to see if your insurer was involved in any court battles due to any lawsuits. Many insurers also offer extra useful resources such as policy templates, training videos, etc. It’s always beneficial to ponder such points.
Insurance Quotes: Once you know your coverage requirements, then get in touch with Cyber Security insurers and receive multiple quotes and offerings.
Assess & Select: You have to analyze quotes and coverage criteria given by several insurers. Choose the option that meets your demands and the budget you specified.
Review & Adjust: The cybersecurity scenarios will keep changing, and you have to keep evaluating your insurance terms to make any needed adjustments.
Bought Insurance Plan? Next Steps
If you have successfully signed an insurance plan, then review all processes and requirements for filing a claim to the insurer in case of a data breach or cyber attack. Many insurers have a policy that you report the incident in a specific time frame or otherwise; your claim will be denied. Watch out for such policies and stick to them.
Moreover, it’s also important to guide your cybersecurity response team about your insurer terms and the right time to approach them.
Do not miss out on any free resources provided by your insurers. These resources can include security training, cybersecurity portals, and other facilities that can be beneficial for your employees and company.
