Cyber Liability Insurance for Massachusetts Business Owners
Cyber liability insurance is no longer something smart business owners can afford to ignore. If you operate a business you are not immune to cybercrime.
Gone are the days when you could hang out your shingle and the community would walk right in and purchase from you. Nowadays, if you don’t have client reviews on Yelp, a mobile-friendly website, an easy online purchasing or scheduling system, and a Facebook following, then people may never seek you out. Putting yourself and your business out there for the world to see does come with significantly more positive exposure, but it also opens you up to threats to your company, employees, and customers. As your local insurance agent, Morse Insurance wants to protect your business from the risks associated with being a business owner in this brave new world, and that includes trying our best to secure your company against cybercrime with the proper cyber liability insurance.
What is Cyber Liability Insurance?
We are so glad you asked us because this is critical coverage that is often overlooked by businesses of all sizes. In particular, if your business operates online, selling goods or services, or if you collect any kinds of personal information about your customers or clients on or offline, you should invest in Cyber Liability protection.
This important liability coverage can protect your company from various exposures such as:
Company Data Breach – A data breach occurs when a customers’ personal information, such as social security number or credit card numbers, are exposed or stolen by a hacker or employee who has accessed the company data base illegally. Many cyber liability policies will cover any expenses associated with the breach, including notification costs, credit monitoring, legal fees and fines, and financial losses resulting from identity theft.
Property Exposures – Your business property consists of more than just the four walls surrounding your company. In the case of cyber liability insurance, your “property” is defined as anything that affects the well-being of your business, such as business interruption, data loss or destruction, lost funds, computer fraud and cyber extortion.
Reputation Management – Repairing your reputation after a data breach can be costly for any size businesses, especially since, many times, you are not aware you’ve been attacked until it’s too late. Damage control, both internally and externally, can be a costly endeavor and something very few companies have planned for. The right cyber liability insurance will help cover – possibly up to 100% – the costs associated with hiring a public relations firm to help repair your reputation.
You may be thinking, “There’s no way this can happen to my company,” consider this:
The cost of data breaches has increased 29% since 2013 and more than half of data breaches are caused by system glitches and human error.
(Source: 2015/2016 IBM sponsored Ponemon Institute “Cost of a Data Breach Study”)
If that doesn’t make you feel uneasy enough to consider cyber liability insurance then perhaps this common business owner scenario will…. Suppose you are traveling, whether for business or pleasure, and you’ve brought your company laptop with you. Now think about what happens if your laptop gets lost or stolen. It’s likely that your login password isn’t very sophisticated (how would you remember it otherwise if it was?). After a criminal gets past that initial login screen, there’s nothing stopping them from getting into your company files because they are not password protected. Someone with basic hacking abilities can access your computer and all of its contents without much effort at all, putting your business and your customers at risk before you even realize you don’t have your laptop. Pretty frightening!
At Morse Insurance, we want to protect your business at all levels. If you are ready to have “the talk” about adding Cyber Liability Insurance to your company or would like a comprehensive review of all your business liability insurance needs, contact us today or call 508-238-0056.