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Below you’ll find answers to frequently asked questions about cyber insurance and DataStream.
Cyber insurance isn’t like the rest of the insurance market. You need to understand Cyber security, technology, the unique cyber insurance products, privacy laws and data related laws. We often equate it to a specialist in the medical field. Your family doctor is great for your general medical issues. If you need heart surgery, you find someone who specializes in that area of medicine.
In essence there are two kinds of coverage you need – although at DataStream we don’t exclude either from every policy we sell. Firstly, there is first-party coverage – in other words, the damage done to your business. DataStream has broad first-party coverage ensuring we cover losses and damages done to your company’s computers, networks, IT systems, data, and business (things like reputational damage or the need for external services like legal) resulting from a cyber attack. The second element is third-party coverage – or damage done to third parties you work with or serve – like customers. Here, again, DataStream offers comprehensive third-party coverage including losses or damages like data loss or stolen information.
The key thing here is only to reduce your premium cost, rather than reducing your coverage. At DataStream, we work with you and your managed service provider to constantly assess and improve your cyber resilience. We assess your tech stack against known threats and support your business in areas like staff training—for example, by helping employees understand what phishing emails look like and what threat they pose.
We work uniquely as partners in the cyber security sector to increase resilience. This makes us better able to understand your risk, to correctly price our policies to accurately reflect your business, and to lower your costs.
- It starts with a quick assessment of where you are as an organization, what type of business you are, and what you have from a technology perspective.
- Next, we look at the type of specific risks an organization like yours might
- We have you fill out a quick
- If necessary, we work with your IT provider to address any outstanding cyber security issues so you can get the best pricing on cyber
- We send you quotes from 30+ carriers, help you compare those options, select the best, and bind
- We’ll conduct a quick audit to document that you have answered everything appropriately and have the materials to support
- Next, we’ll help you put an incident response plan in place and practice scenarios for cyber incidents you may encounter
- Your DataStream contact will regularly revisit your cyber security posture as the threat landscape
- Review your existing cyber security tools, technologies and posture
- Help you to put together an incident response plan
- Help you to put together a business impact assessment
- Run mock cyber incidents
- Help you measure your overall cyber risk
- Provide an analysis of how you compare to other organizations in your industry from a cyber risk perspective
Think of cyber insurance like car insurance—even if you have the best technology on the market, or you drive the best car, sometimes in life something will suddenly appear that you can’t defend yourself against.
In a car, it could be another driver pulling out unexpectedly at an intersection, giving you (and your car’s technology) no time to react. The car’s technology might save your life, but without the insurance, how will you pay for the car to be replaced so you can continue on your journey? Cyber insurance is also there to help you continue on your journey.
If you get hacked or breached by cyber criminals, cyber insurance will help pick up the pieces and get your business back up and running again. It helps cover the costs of things like data loss, replacing your technology, legal fees and all the other issues a cyber attack can cause.
There’s no one-size fits all approach. Every business is different and the costs involved in supporting you after an attack are unique to your business.
At DataStream, our focus is on supporting you and your business, with the help of your cyber security technology Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to be more resilient before an attack ever happens.
As part of that process, we also work with you to understand your risk profile, and what you would need if you were attacked. By partnering with you and your technology providers, we can more accurately assess the level of support you need, so you get exactly what you require without overpaying.
A good cyber insurance policy is going to cover the vast majority of technology related incidents including:
- Ransomware
- Business interruption related to cyber attack
- The cost related to losing or having records stolen
- The theft of money by electronic means
- Notification expenses if you lost private or confidential customer data
- PR and reputational damage
- Fines and penalties charged by organizations
- The incident response costs related to these activities
- The legal costs associated with these incidents
A comprehensive cyber risk program includes three main areas:
- Cyber Security technologies and services that are often handled by an IT department or an outsourced IT vendor like an MSP
- Compliance-related activities that align to an organization’s specific industry
- Cyber insurance that ensures the company doesn’t face the losses in case of an attack
Ideally, these three areas work together, but cyber insurance often acts as the “defacto” regulator and sets the standards an organization should meet in technology and the compliance areas.
Insurance in particular is very good at measuring risk, and the suggestions and requirements are a very good measure of what ultimately will keep an organization safer.