The Expert Podcast

So do you need to have cyber insurance or cyber liability insurance? Is this a type of coverage you are is required for you or your company Well, in most cases, there's no law that requires you to have cyber liability insurance whether you're an individual personal lines or a business with commercial lines coverage, however, Most insurance policies that are carried by a company or an individual. Have exclusions for certain cyber losses. If you're a company and your server. hacked and somebody deletes all your data. Normally that's an exclusion from coverage under your general liability insurance policy. if you have somebody that. infiltrate your system. And creates damage for your. your customers many times that's an exclusion from coverage under your Eno policy your errors and omissions policy. Again. Check your policy We're not saying every policies this way but in general you want to verify that your policy has these exclusions. So does that mean you need to buy. coverage Well, The first question is what would an, a cyber liability policy cover? The cyber liability policy is not…the same from every company It's not the same in every state. There's no standard. Cyber liability insurance policy. There's many different types In fact most cyber insurance policies are considered what's called surplus lines policies meaning that there's no standard form filed with the state. each policy is set the terms and conditions by the insurance company that writes it. So you want to look at any policy you'd purchase and make sure the coverages are what you want. In fact, you probably want to verify that if you want certain coverages that the agent confirms in writing. That your particular cyber policy has those coverages because they are all different from one another. Now. There's a lot of businesses think that they need to get one only if they're in the technical industry or computer industry. But most companies now are very computer dependent. You probably have a customer management system. You may have, platforms you use to integrate with your suppliers or your customers. you may have an e-commerce system that bills your clients or customers. many times your internal, software your payroll. your manufacturing systems are all on different programs that run your business. That's all technical That's all cyber. If it's connected to the internet…It's possible that a bad actor a hacker. cyber criminal can attack that And if it does damage, you may or may not have coverage In addition. You want to determine whether or not you need to have coverage for third parties. So if you are. A or from third parties, if you're a company that relies on a supplier…And that supplier has a computer problem whether or not it's cyber. Attack ransomware. or their system goes down. Would that affect your business What if you can't buy your supplies from that comes. for 30 days while they fix their system. Do you have coverage for that third party? Not every policy covers that. What about if your system gets hacked and it affects your customers? Maybe their information is released. You want to make sure that if you want this your coverage would extend to that Not every policy does. So while there's no law that says in most cases you need to have cyber liability many times licensing for certain industries or your contracts might specify that you have proper coverage It may not specify cyber coverage, but it may. require you to have proper coverage for you your clients your customers, so work with a good agent make sure that your insurance agent or broker. Gives you a breakdown of what you currently have coverage for where you may have gaps and whether or not cyber liability insurance. Would be valuable for your business and what you would have to do to qualify. Not every business will qualify for it You may have to put some, some policies in place to protect your system first before you're eligible for cyber coverage.