As we turn the calendar to 2018, an important consideration for businesses is to make sure that they are properly covered for calamities that may come their way. Of course, most understand that they must have liability policies or errors and omissions (E&O) coverage, but they also believe that this coverage applies to cyber attacks and subsequent damage, such as third-party losses stemming from personal injury and commercial crime.
However, a typical insurance policy may not offer such coverage, which could leave a business exposed to liability.
For instance, a standard liability policy may not cover losses for theft or losses from data breaches. Further, such a policy may not provide coverage for cyber fraud mitigation efforts. Perhaps a cyber criminal is holding critical information for ransom or certain steps are required to recover information lost due to a computer virus. A standard policy may not cover the costs required to recover funds, data or intellectual property lost to hackers.
Because of this, it is vitally important for businesses to review their insurance policies to ensure they have proper coverage. This is especially important if they are offered “cyber-insurance” policies that combine coverage for responding to an incident, along with the tools and resources for executing such a response. You can’t have one without the other, but discounts on such coverage may leave out vital portions. The same reasoning applies to insurance offerings purporting to cover property damage, bodily injury and related losses.
The preceding is not legal advice. For specific questions on the extent of insurance coverage, contact an experienced attorney.