Dive Brief:
- Last week, U.K.-based insurance broker Kingsbridge launched a new Cyber Liability product designed to protect contractors in the event of a cyberattack or data breach, according to a press release.
- The policy will provide customers with £25,000 to defend themselves against cyber extortion and ransom costs and another £25,000 for regulatory defense and penalties, according to the company. Customers can also receive an additional £100,000 to help pay for corrective system and data efforts and £25,000 for business interruption costs.
- The new offering also includes access to a 24-hour helpline and specialist cyber incident report service that can help customers recover lost data, restore compromised systems and pinpoint the cause of the breach.
Dive Insight:
Organizations need external providers to keep systems running, such as building service providers and insurance coordination services. But as the third-party tech ecosystem grows, new opportunities for security mishaps emerge.
When a business gets hit with a cyberattack, contractors, freelancers and others connected to the company can also suffer. Alternatively, those third parties can also be the cause of cyberattacks if they inadvertently expose the organization to a breach. In a worst case scenario, a contractor could find themselves liable for a large scale attack even if they don not actually work for the company.
For example, earlier this month, Anthem suffered a data breach impacting more than 18,500 individuals when contractor emailed a file with Anthem members' information to his personal email address in July 2016. The contractor was an employee of LaunchPoint Ventures, a third-party contractor which provides insurance coordination services to the payer.
Given growing cybersecurity threats, insurance policies like the one Kingsbridge is now offering could certainly prove popular. Overall, the global cyber insurance market is expected to grow 131% by 2020, compared to the 2016 market, according to a recent report from the Insurance Information Institute.