Cyber Insurance vs. Traditional Lines of Insurance: Who’s Got Your Back?

Here’s a good example of where there are differences and coverages between business insurance, liability insurance, crime insurance, and cyber liability insurance. There’s an article from Business Insurance magazine where Travelers Insurance paid a claim of phishing which is, kind of a misrepresentation of a fraudster trying to get access to a computer. The company lost here $600,000 and Travelers Insurance paid the claim under its crime policy. The company had a crime policy, that’s not a cyber insurance policy it’s a crime policy. They paid it under that policy and refused to pay it under the computer fraud coverage. Which is also not cyber liability insurance, that’s another type of fraud coverage. The problem is that the other one that they refused had much higher limits so they would have received more money. 

In March, a still undefined bad actor emailed fraudulent invoices said to be from a vendor to the purchasing manager for $600,000. They paid the fraudulent invoice and they lost the money. So this may have been covered that would have been afforded under cyber liability insurance or other types of coverages. So it’s a good example of where you’re putting together coverages for your company to make sure that you have no gaps. Right, no loose ends, or at least if you do have loose ends, you know where they are. If you want not to have every last insurance policy in the world that’s okay, as long as you know where your risk still exists and if you’re willing to accept that risk. Sometimes a cyber liability insurance policy is a standalone policy separate from your other business insurance and it may fill in some of the gaps. It may overlap some insurance or it may add additional coverages, but just make sure as you are putting together the different policies for your enterprise that you understand what’s in them and how they cover different types of risks and don’t cover other types of risks. What are the exclusions from coverages? And if you have exclusions you’re not willing to live with, make sure you get an endorsement or additional policies that fill in those gaps in coverage.

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