Cyber Insurance

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced last week that Australia was recently on the receiving end of a significant amount of sophisticated cyber-attacks. ‘This activity is targeting Australian organisations across a range of sectors, including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure.’

The announcement comes following an accumulated number of unrelenting cyber-attacks having been linked to be from a state-based organisation. Whilst Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggests there has not been a large-scale personal data breach, the message received is loud and clear. We must all be aware of the threat and tread cautiously. "The actions that we are taking are the actions that we need to take and we will continue to be as vigilant as we possibly can be."

Cyber-attacks have become a part of everyday life. Most of us are all familiar with or know of someone who has been the recipient of a cyber related attack. These attacks can come in the form of phishing scams, ransomware, viruses etc.

Cyber Insurance is designed to help businesses recover from a Cyber event leading to a data breach. Generally, a Cyber Insurance policy is designed to cater to 3 main areas:

• Liability in the form of privacy lawsuits and regulatory defence

• Financial Loss coming from extortion, notification expenses, data recovery, business interruption, crime/theft

• Emergency Incident Response and costs associated to the response of a Cyber related breach

In an evolving world with many businesses transacting and communicating online why do most of us still carry on without much thought to Cyber Insurance to help protect our business or livelihood?