Blog

21May

Technology is a double-edged sword. It increases efficiency yet creates a new entry point for risks. Just last year, Target Corporation had to pay $10M to settle a lawsuit brought about by a breach in their database exposing their consumer’s’ private information such as email and phone numbers. Sony Corp experienced the same exposure with their email system where private correspondences were uploaded to WikiLeaks late in 2014 and again this May.

This type of 21st century crime leaves businesses at a great risk. The security breaches from 2014 proved costly to the affected companies’ reputations and consumer trust was severely affected. Until last March of this year, there has not been an insurance policy that specifically protects companies from this type of threat.

CyberSecurity by Chubb Corp is the latest insurance policy  to address the problem with cyber extortion. Their policy aims to address the full scope of risks associated with doing business in a technology-driven market. Cybersecury’s features include:

• Combining third-party (cyber liability) and first-party (cyber crime expense) coverages into one international policy.
• Coverage for direct loss, legal liability and consequential loss resulting from cyber security breaches.
• Integration with your existing insurance program from Chubb and provides options for enhancing your cyber coverage based on your needs.
• Complete online network security risk assessment, resulting in a comprehensive report of your company’s exposures.

There are two general choices business are left with when under attack by hackers. Their first option is to delete their whole database which means restarting from the ground up to rebuild and secure vital information.

The second choice is to pay a ransom to pacify further damage. Whichever way a business chooses to deal with the extortion they will suffer a huge damage. What we, at Village Insurance Direct, try to advocate is that small companies are just as much at risk as big corporations and regardless of your company’s scale you need to be armed.

A study on cyber crime conducted by Ponemon Institute in 2014 implied 2 important details:

1. Information technology assets are 39% more exposed than property assets on a relative value to insurance protection basis.
2. Proliferation of mobile devices and Internet of Things (IOT) will send cyber risks skyrocketing over next five years.