Cyber Fraud Insurance & Protection

In today’s increasingly digital world, it pays to protect yourself online. Genesis Insurance offers cyber insurance policies to protect you and your business against cyber fraud in its various forms.

 

In this blog, our team has gone undercover with cyber fraud experts to find out more about the threats, and how we can best protect ourselves against them.

 

 

Most organisations store or process data and have IT operations; cyber insurance has been tailored to address network and data privacy risks, addressing a number of risks which have traditionally been uninsurable.

While cyber insurance is by no means a replacement to good IT security practices, the cover provides a safety net should the unforeseen occur, or for events which can be difficult to manage from an IT security perspective.

 

What is Cyber Insurance?

 

The term “cyber insurance” is far broader than this name would imply, and extends to cover a host of events.

Let’s look at some of these situations in further detail:

 

Cyber extortion

Cyber extortion is an online crime in which hackers hold your data, website, computer systems, or other sensitive information hostage until you meet their demands for
payment. It often takes the form of ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, both of which could paralyze your business IT systems.

 

Denial of service (DDoS) attacks

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

 

Downstream attack liability

A potential liability incurred by a company whose computer systems are compromised by an attacker and used to attack another company’s systems, resulting in damages.

 

Hacking

Hacking refers to activities that seek to compromise digital devices, such as computers, smartphones, tablets, and even entire networks. Hacking is typically technical in nature (like creating malvertising that deposits malware in a drive-by attack requiring no user interaction). But hackers can also use psychology to trick the user into clicking on a malicious attachment or providing personal data.

 

Insider and privilege misuse (internal and service provider)

Privilege misuse can take two forms: 1) a cyber criminal obtaining the credentials of a privileged user and doing harm or 2) a privileged user causing harm due to negligence or malicious intent.

 

Malware

Malware is a catch-all term for any type of malicious software designed to harm or exploit any programmable device, service or network. Cybercriminals typically use it to extract data that they can leverage over victims for financial gain.

 

Physical theft and loss

This applies to both devices and physical hard copy data.

 

Threats posed by third party access into a client environment

Third-party risk management involves a series of security control implementationsthat should be applied to the information systems of both your organization and that of the suppliers.

 

Things to consider when contemplating cyber insurance:

 

 

– Dependence on data and systems

If access to these was removed, could you recover from scratch and if so how long would it take and at what cost?

 

– What data do you store/process/have access to

What could the impact be if data were lost or compromised (own and 3rd party)?

 

– If an incident occurred, who would you get to investigate and assist in recovering from the incident?

– Are they equipped to conduct a proper forensic investigation?

– What would it cost to conduct a forensic investigation?

– What could the potential impact be of not investigating and managing an incident correctly?

 

– What could liability and defence costs total?

 

– Do you have coverage gaps in your existing cover?

 

Incident response is a cornerstone of a cyber insurance policy.

The insurers we work with at Genesis Insurance have a dedicated incident response panel comprising highly regarded and experienced incident response providers, who are accessible via a 24/7 incident response hotline.

 

Contact the Genesis Brokers team today to find out more about our cover options, and get a personalised consultation to find the best cover for your cyber insurance needs.