Equifax recently came to a settlement agreement regarding its 2017 data breach that affected nearly 150 million Americans. Those who had their personal information exposed in the breach are eligible to file a claim, with each receiving at least $125 each or up to ten years of free credit monitoring. A company as large as Equifax can afford this type of expenditure per person with the amount of revenue they generate even post-data breach, but can a small business?
Data breaches of small businesses likely won’t come close to exposing the data of 145 million people, but even if only 1,000 people’s records are breached, that’s still $125,000 that the small business would owe if everyone made a claim at $125 per person. How many small businesses have $125,000 on hand to take care of paying for a data breach?
That’s why small businesses should invest in cyber liability insurance to protect against, manage, and contain data breaches.
Where can you obtain instant cyber liability insurance to contain and manage data breaches?
Colonial Surety includes cyber liability insurance with our ERISA fidelity bond packages with fiduciary liability insurance to best protect your company plan against a cyber attack.
Colonial’s cyber insurance provides a services-based solution to help plan sponsors manage data breaches successfully. These services include a dedicated team of cyber breach professionals who assist plan sponsors at every stage of incident investigation and breach response. These professionals coordinate the carefully vetted forensics experts and specialized lawyers to help plan sponsors establish what’s been compromised; assess plan sponsor responsibility; and, notify those individuals affected. In addition, these services will also coordinate credit or identity monitoring, and PR advice to help the plan sponsor safeguard its reputation. Of course, Colonial’s cyber insurance also indemnifies and defends plan sponsors from covered lawsuits or regulatory actions, the risk of which may be reduced by a well-coordinated breach response, but can never be completely eliminated.
Ongoing governance and evaluation of recordkeepers can help protect data, but the only way to fully protect against a potential cyber attack’s data breach is to purchase cyber liability insurance from Colonial Surety Company.