Cyber Insurance: The Next Big Thing for Businesses

  • 7 July 2014
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MARY THOMPSON    JULY 6, 2014FROM CNBC Earlier this year, New York City-based staffing agency Clarity bought cyber insurance for the first time. This spring it added more coverage.
"We were actually hearing about it from our clients," said Elizabeth Wade, Clarity's operations manager. "They were asking us about it and in order to prevent being behind the eight ball we felt like we really wanted to be proactive and get the insurance 'cause we knew it was something that was important to our clients, and then it was important to us as well."
 
With a staff of 30, Clarity was looking to protect the information it takes from the clients it places, like their Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The initial coverage it bought from insurer CNA covered any legal costs and the costs of lost business that would come with a breach. This spring it added coverage for credit monitoring if its client data are hacked.
 
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I guess it was only a matter of time.  Since the costs of a breach are so high, a lot of businesses wouldn't survive it without insurance.
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Cyber Security Insurance Difficult for Business to Navigate

August 3rd, 2014by Identity Theft Speaker RobertSiciliano 

 Cyber insurance is now booming, with about 50 carriers in the industry. An increasing number of companies have cyber insurance to protect against cyber crime. However, businesses claim it’s not easy to get adequate coverage. Losses from data breaches are difficult to quantify. The tangible losses are more easily insured, says a New York Times online report. When it comes to a data breach, there are often related losses such as reputational damage and loss of customer loyalty that are harder to quantify.
 
Add to this the fact that underwriters don’t yet have sufficient data to estimate the likeliness or cost of an attack; most breaches get missed or aren’t reported publicly.
 
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Cyber Insurance is big business for sure it is the future as breaches become more dominant and attacks more frequent against business
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@Antus67 wrote:
Cyber Insurance is big business for sure it is the future as breaches become more dominant and attacks more frequent against business
It already is.
 
They have to iron out the kinks. What I think about is with the amount of fraud rising, if a claim is made, will the insurance company drop the insured after a claim is filed?  Will the insurance company find a loophole and not pay the claim?
 
Then there is the question of how this insurance will effect the consumers as ultimately, the cost will be passed on to them.
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The following article is a update

Buying into Cyber Insurance - Do You Need It?

By Brian Prince on November 26, 2014
 
The subject of cyber liability insurance has gained steam in recent years as news of high-profile data breaches continues to litter the headlines.
Yet recent surveys show that businesses have not been as quick to adopt cyber insurance as some may have expected. A survey from Advisen of 500 people ranging from brokers to carriers to risk managers and insurance buyers underscored this reality. Eighty percent of the brokers surveyed noted that while there has been heightened interest in cyber coverage at the C-suite or board levels, that hasn't translated into a significant driver of sales.  
"Seventy-three percent of respondents felt that the insured’s lack of understanding of the exposure was the main obstacle," according to a whitepaper outlining the survey results. "One broker called the sales process, “an uphill battle”, with IT professionals unwilling to accept that their systems could be compromised."
 
Almost half the respondents said that "less than 25 percent" of their clients were interested in the coverage, the research revealed. However, more than 25 percent of respondents said they have a sizeable customer base interested in buying cyber coverage.
 
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