Cyber liability insurance

Definition

Cover for a data breach: forensics, notification, and the ransom response.

Why It Matters

A small service business with card numbers on file and one shared email login is a target precisely because nobody is defending it, and general liability explicitly excludes the whole category. The cover pays for the forensic firm, the state-required customer notifications, and the negotiators a ransomware note demands, none of which a twenty-person company can improvise. Ask in diligence what customer data the business actually stores; the answer is usually more than the seller thinks.

In numbers: At this deal size a $1M limit is commonly quoted around $1,500 to $3,000 a year, against state notification duties that can cost more than that per hundred affected customers.