CYBER INSURANCE IN MASSACHUSETTS

What Protections Does Cyber Liability Insurance Provide?

Cyber liability insurance is generally designed to help protect businesses from emerging online threats and data-related risks. Most policies provide protection against a host of potential attacks or breaches, and they’ll reimburse a business for certain expenses if the business experiences a covered attack or breach. Some of the costs that a policy might offer reimbursement for include:

• Lost revenue caused by a temporary halt in operations

• Lost revenue caused by damage to the business’ reputation

• Financial reparations that affected clients or customers are awarded

• Credit monitoring costs for affected clients or customers

• Consulting costs for identifying and addressing any security weakness

Because cyber liability insurance is relatively new, the incidents covered and protections provided can vary more than they do with certain other kinds of insurance. Thus, it’s especially important to carefully review all of the coverages, terms, conditions, exclusions and limits included in a cyber liability policy to fully understand the protections the policy provides.

Are Ransomware Attacks Covered by Cyber Liability Insurance?

One example of a how cyber liability insurance coverages can vary is evident in how ransomware attacks are treated by policies. These attacks typically lock down a company’s data and refuse to release it until a ransom is paid. They’re a fairly new type of online threat, but they’re becoming more and more prevalent.

Some cyber liability policies have updated their coverages to include ransomware attacks, but others don’t yet provide protection against this threat. To see whether a particular policy does, it’s necessary to carefully review all of the policy’s paperwork.

Does Commercial Property Insurance Cover Data Breaches?

While commercial property insurance may provide coverage for the physical servers, computers and devices a business owns, most commercial property policies don’t offer coverage for the software or data stored on such hardware. If these policies do offer any coverage for data or software, it’s usually very limited.

For example, a commercial property policy might pay to replace physical devices that are destroyed in a fire or stolen by a burglar. It would be unusual for this type of policy to pay for revenue that’s lost or credit monitoring that’s needed after a breach, though.

Thus, most businesses still need a cyber liability policy regardless of whether they have a commercial property policy.

How Can Businesses in Massachusetts Get Cyber Insurance?

Because there’s a significant amount of variance among cyber liability policies, Massachusetts businesses should contact Garrity Insurance agent who specializes in cyber insurance when shopping for a policy. Our agents are familiar with this particular type of insurance and will know what coverages are available and how to check individual policies’ protections. They’ll also be able to review many insurer’s cyber liability policies since they’re independent.