Corporate Insurance Blog

My former colleague, Ken Trotter, and I recently wrote an article titled, “Protecting Your Company Against Loss or Liability Arising from Cyberattacks.”  It has been published in Hospitality Lawyer‘s September 2011 In-House Counsel Newsletter.  In the article, we discuss insurance coverage for data breaches, cyber risks, cyberattacks, and cyber events.  We discuss coverages under new cyberinsurance policies, and overlapping coverage with other insurance policies for data breaches, cyber risks, cyberattacks, and cyber events.

We provide an overview of potential coverage under:

• First party property policies;
• Business interruption coverage and policies;
• Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies;
• Directors and Officers Liability (D&O) policies;
• Errors and Omissions policies; and
• Crime and Fidelity policies.

We also give practical considerations when making claims for coverage.

Here is the opening paragraph to the article:

Does your company have insurance policies that will cover data breaches and cyber attacks?  The hospitality industry is particularly vulnerable to data breaches and other cyberattacks.  According to Willis Group Holdings, a British insurance firm, insurance claims for data theft worldwide jumped 56% last year, with a large number of those attacks targeting the hospitality industry.  The report said the largest share of cyber attacks—38%—were aimed at hotels, resorts and tour companies.  As just one example of these attacks, computer hackers broke into the computer system of a national hotel chain and stole the guests’ credit card information.  This summer, the Secret Service informed the owner of a family-run Italian restaurant that a thief hacked into the communication system between the cash register and the credit card processing company, stole credit card numbers, and then used them to fraudulently make purchases across the United States.  Businesses in the hospitality industry will continue to be attractive targets for hackers and data thieves, particularly since they obtain and maintain confidential data from consumers including countless credit card records.  There are risks for companies well beyond the possibility of hackers stealing consumer data.  Vital corporate data, whether it’s shared on the company’s servers or by third parties, may become inaccessible or even destroyed in a hacker attack.  Managing such risk is critical to successful business operations. Read more

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