The Expert Podcast

so here's an unusual scenario that might be in need for having a cyber liability insurance policy or even have an cyber protection at your company. this is a new consumer privacy law passed in Connecticut this article comes from a law firm that provides services for companies that have legal problems with regard to consumer rights. in this article says that the Connecticut governor signed a law that requires companies that conduct business in Connecticut or produce products and services two protect consumer data. and most of the law has to do with not collecting data that is not required not collecting data from children not collecting data and using it in an improper way. but it also requires that if your company has any kind of breach or loss of data or release of the data to third parties like a hack or some ransomware that you have to notify the government and the people involved that their data might be out in public. so if that happens to you or your company what would the losses be. do you have any liability to consumers if you have ten thousand customers whose customer files were sold on the dark web name address social security number date of birth driver's license number whatever you collect do you have liability to those people. do you have to pay you know damages to those people of their have their identities stolen. do you have to pay a fine. do you have to pay for credit monitoring for all those people for five years. that's something you should check with your corporate counsel to see what your potential liability is and also make sure you're doing at least best practices for protecting records protecting data for your company if you can show that you're at least doing some cyber protection steps in your business you may have some defense. we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice make sure you get good legal advice you may want to have a cyber liability policy that kicks in if you have such a loss or damages to third parties. cyber insurance policies are for yourself for your company having losses and damages and losing business but it's also cover you if your oversight or your maybe even you're errors caused losses for third parties. if you accidentally let somebody log into your system and they download your customer file. if you have an employee who is incompetent and breaches the firewall. you might have losses and those are cases where you're a company might be liable for money damages and that's where you want to look at will a cyber policy cover those. not all of them do but you want to know at least if you have that coverage or not if you think it's needed if that kind of loss could be consequential to your company. at least do the bare minimum of protecting your data which you may be already doing but look at what the laws are in your state and the federal laws about release of information to third parties.