Insurance for Data Breach – What Is It?

There are many challenges small companies face in today’s highly competitive world of business. As such, many businesses have taken actions to streamline operations, and have made the move to paperless offices and cloud computing in order to get an edge over competitors. Unfortunately, this has left them vulnerable to a risk of a different nature – a data breach.

Hackers are evolving at a more advanced pace than the software to stop them in their tracks is. They want information of any kind about your business, your employees, and the clients and customers who have trusted you with their personal and financial information.

Why Do You Need Data Breach Insurance?

For most of today’s small businesses it’s not a matter of IF a data breach will occur, but WHEN will it happen. That’s why you need to invest in adequate data breach insurance coverage for your small business.

In addition to the public relations nightmare data breaches bring to businesses, there are costs that can be quite significant. These include costs of legal defense, credit monitoring services, court fees, and even the expenses of notifying your customers that their information may have been compromised in the attack.

These costs can be particularly detrimental to your business if you’re paying for these costs completely out of pocket, without the help of insurance.

What Does Data Breach Insurance Cover?

The nature of data breaches is brutal for small businesses that are ill-equipped to defend against brute force attacks despite their best efforts. Data breach insurance helps small businesses in these events by covering the costs of:

• Litigation defense
• Forensic investigations
• Crisis management and public relations
• Notification expenses
• Liability expenses

It’s important for you to be proactive in your efforts to avoid the scandal associated with data breach by establishing strict policies about passwords, device usage, social media, etc. and to purchase adequate data breach insurance as a backup plan for the time when data breaches do occur.