As we mentioned in an earlier blog post, many articles related to Privacy and Network Security, or Cyber Security, issues focus on the prevention of breaches or insurance policies to financially cover these breaches and failures, rather than focusing on recovering from a breach. While Privacy and Network Security insurance is vital to any one of your clients, as well as your own company, insurance experts are realizing the important need to focus on incident resolution.
Reuters recently published an article stressing that the cyber insurance market is going to double in 2014 over 2013. Traditionally, Privacy and Network Security or Cyber Insurance have been a slow-growth industry in search of new markets. However now, the need for this type of coverage has never been more prevalent. There have been numerous, public incidents at companies such as Target, eBay and even government agencies such as the Office of Personnel Management.
These cases have all bee high-profile, increasing awareness for the need for Privacy and Network Security insurance coverage, however they have also shown how there is a weakness in insurance companies’ and agents ability to provide incident response expertise. With this in mind, it’s important to ask yourself what potential insureds and their insurance companies can do to resolve this issue.
Insurers must first realize that while prevention is of course important, breaches are inevitable. This means that insurers need to focus more on quick detection, response, and remediation. Offering these solutions and ideas to clients will help to gain their trust and avoid situations such as the Target incident; in which their data breach took weeks to resolve and tens of millions of user account were compromised in the meantime.
Experts say that the biggest challenge for most companies is their lack of knowledgeable talent in-house that can handle a breach’s aftermath. They stress the importance of having the right people in place working with a sound process vetted in advance, saying that breaches will inevitably get worse without this. An insurers role with this should be working with their clients to develop best practices when it comes to risk management and data handling.
Looking beyond the data breach itself into privacy and network security loss recovery is important in any business. At PLRisk Advisors, our Privacy and Network Security Coverage is the solution to helping your customer manage and protect against risk. Please contact us today for more information at (855) 403-5982.
