Cyber insurance

Insurance for cyber-attacks, cloud failure and third party liabilities

Cyber incidents happen every day; some are targeted, others random and viral. Business leaders without a well thought out strategy around cyber protection are effectively gambling with all their funds to develop their business. Or depending on your cash reserves, your very survival.

What is a cyber-attack?

Cyber-attacks are illegal attempts to gain access to an organisations’ data or to disrupt their operations for criminal, espionage, politics or simply for mischief. Millions of attacks are launched at firms every day; some actually succeed in breaching these companies’ defences and wreak havoc.

An increasingly popular form of attack uses emails that appear to be from a known teammate, to trick people into installing malicious software – it’s an easy mistake that can lead to your business being locked down, losing money and held to ransom.

A growing number of breaches come from your employees (often disgruntled) with insider knowledge.

What does cyber insurance cover?

Cyber insurance (also known as cyber risk or cyber liability) means Howden is right by your side, before, during and after your incident.

Our cyber & crime insurance protects your company comprehensively against business interruption, liability and other risks. Our market-leading products offer a unique all-round protection - from the proactive measures in the context of a suspected cyber-attack to the extensive additional costs of maintaining business operations.

The 360-degree protection is rounded off by comprehensive cloud failure cover.

The standout benefits of cyber insurance are access to highly experienced experts to nullify the threat as quickly as possible and help mitigate disastrous consequences. 

As well as your emergency incident response and the costs of reinstalling hardware and software, cyber liabilities policies offer cover for: 

• costs of notifying clients 
• monitoring your customers’ stolen credit card and ID details 
• business interruption and alternative costs of working 
• costs of investigation 
• costs of extortion
• legal defence fees and damages. 

If you have insurance you can expect a fast, expert response from: 

1. Forensic IT analysts to nullify the threat quickly

Using genuine specialists who know the modus operandi of the criminals and the nuanced behaviour of the latest threats, companies can get to resolve the breach faster. 

Forensic specialists deal with these threats every day – they hunt down the breach and restore security, to stop further business interruption and even prevent further regulatory investigation. Having these experts work alongside your team is a must-have for any breach incident.

2. Specialist lawyers to advise on incident handling and regulatory fallout  

Get prompt advice from commercial lawyers with extensive experience of handling cyber claims, to help navigate a complex compliance situation and even fight your case if it comes to that.  

3. Public relations experts with deep experience in crisis communications

Mandatory notification and disgruntled customers can leak information of your breach as potential news to media. If media responses are handled without the right Public Relations your reputation could be damaged further which could have repercussions to your existing customers and stakeholders. 

With the Cyber Performance Index, we accompany you step by step to:

Why do I need cyber insurance today?

The huge range of connected applications and systems businesses use each day present a risk, particularly wherever one ‘talks’ to another.

Wherever people are involved in building, configuring or operating these interconnected systems, they can create inadvertent entry points for cyber criminals. 

But cybercrime is much more about people than technology – that’s why insurance is so important. 

There are many ways you can protect your business from some of the threat – using a combination of technology, process and people – but you can never eliminate them entirely. That’s where cyber insurance comes in – ready to pick up the pieces. 

Additional benefits of the Howden hendricks service

Help to deal with insurers

Dealing with an insurer can get a little confrontational; much better to communicate through a friendly, professional broker who brings them millions of dollars of business each year. The mutual respect between insurers and a global brokerage means we can move quickly towards a fair resolution, always acting in your interests.  

Risk management training  

To help you plan for and reduce risk, we provide seminars, tools and training – to get the most of your policy before an incident happens.  

Policy wording reviews 

Subtle differences in wording can create gaps you didn’t even know were there. Identifying gaps early can save a lot of headaches later.  We are always testing out policy wordings with real scenarios to make sure they are fully up to date and responsive to the latest challenges. 

If you’ve not budgeted for cyber insurance this year, remember that cyber criminals will not wait. 

Cyber troubleshooting is a Howden speciality.

Things to remember: 

• Cyber attackers gain access to an organisation’s systems months beforehand - then detonate their malicious code when the conditions suit them.
   
• You can’t know what you don’t know – unknown flaws in third-party software or hardware (called a zero-day vulnerability) are often exploited to launch cyber-attacks e.g. The Wannacry event. 
   
• Cyber-attacks are creating a climate of high risk and uncertainty. Organisations are now beginning to realise that with no real 100% protection, they need a product such as cyber insurance to hedge the costs of a potential breach and to manage the uncertainty.