Cyber insurance is an insurance policy intended to protect your business from internet-based risks, such as data breaches, malware and ransom attacks, and business account and email compromises.
Cyber insurance policies will also respond to liability claims and ancillary expenses from attacks or breaches. In some cases, cyber insurance might provide access to a panel of top-tier breach coaches and other service providers to help your business recover.
Who Needs Cyber Insurance?
Every business needs cyber insurance, especially if your company stores and collects customer data, including names, addresses, credit card information, Social Security numbers, etc. This is not limited to offline data, but also data stored in the cloud through service providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, etc.
We here at Billy strongly encourage all small businesses to consider the value of cyber insurance, especially if they handle or use digital information.
Cybercrime By the Numbers
- There is one cyberattack every 40 seconds.
- The most common type of attack a small business will face is ransomware. According to Hiscox,1 in 6 businesses that fell victim to cyberattacks in 2021 faced ransomware, and more than half of them paid the ransom.
- The average ransomware payout in 2021 was $540,000.
- Over the past few years, 2,000 reports have been filed to the FBI daily on cybercrimes.
What Is Covered by Cyber Insurance?
Cyber insurance policies help with the following:
- Notifying customers about data breaches. Most states require you by law to notify all your customers if there has been a breach.
- Restoring the personal identities of affected customers by offering credit monitoring services. If one license per year for an affected customer is $120 per year imagine the cost for 10,000 affected customers, employees, and vendors.
- Cyber extortion to recover compromised data.
- Loss of transferred funds.
- Repairing damaged computer systems.
- Covering civil damages. Most of these liability lawsuits are class actions, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages at a minimum, even for very small companies.
How Much Does Cyber Insurance Cost?
Billy helps your business get cyber liability insurance to cover both first- and third-party monetary losses due to data breaches and other cybercrimes that might compromise sensitive financial and customer information.
