Cyber insurance quotes from licensed Australian brokers

What cyber insurance usually covers

Cyber policies split into first party cover, which is your own loss, and third party cover, which is your liability to others. Most businesses need both, though the balance shifts depending on how much personal information you hold.

• Incident response, including forensic investigation and legal advice, usually from the first call
• Business interruption while systems are down, and the cost of restoring data
• Ransomware and cyber extortion costs, subject to the wording and applicable law
• Notification costs and credit monitoring for affected individuals
• Liability to third parties whose data you held
• Regulatory investigation costs, and fines where they are insurable
• Social engineering and funds transfer fraud, commonly a sub limit rather than the full limit

The response service is the real product

A cyber policy typically gives you a hotline and an appointed panel: forensic IT specialists, privacy lawyers, and communications support. In the first day of an incident, when you are trying to work out what was taken, whether to shut systems down and what you are legally required to tell people, that access matters more than the limit on the schedule. When you compare quotes, compare the response arrangements as carefully as the price.

Notifiable data breaches and what the law requires

Australia's Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires organisations covered by the Privacy Act to assess a suspected eligible data breach and, where it is likely to result in serious harm, to notify affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The assessment has to be carried out promptly, generally within thirty days of becoming aware. Meeting that obligation properly takes legal and forensic input quickly, which is exactly what the response section funds.

What underwriters ask about

Cyber underwriting has tightened considerably. Expect specific questions about multi factor authentication, particularly on email and remote access, how you back up and whether backups are held offline, how quickly you patch, whether you use an endpoint detection tool and what staff training you run. Businesses without multi factor authentication increasingly struggle to get terms at all. The good news is that the controls insurers want are mostly the ones that stop the incident happening.