More cyber protection for businesses through XL Group

XL Group’s Cyber and Technology business in North America has introduced a new insurance policy that extends enhanced protection to businesses that are growing more concerned with cyber and technology risks.

“Businesses don’t have to look very long or hard to find instances of cybercrimes and security breaches. It’s happening every day — most recently the FBI is investigating several coordinated attacks carried out on several financial institutions that could have resulted in the loss of gigabytes of information including checking account information,”  according to John Coletti, chief underwriting officer for XL Group’s Cyber and Technology insurance business. “As a result, businesses are growing more concerned not only about what the cost of a breach can do to their bottom lines, but what risks it poses to their reputation and customers’ trust as well.”

XL Group’s cyber insurance policy provides liability and first-party protection after a company sustains a data breach, including both the legal and voluntary data breach notification and crisis management costs, loss of business income, costs to recover data, costs to respond to regulatory inquiries or an investigation and costs to defend and indemnify any subsequent third party claims including class action claims. Technological advances in data management are providing businesses with an option to use what was once thought of as useless data or to collect information to improve operations in sorts of ways, such as target marketing.

“In many instances businesses are unaware that an activity is conducted in violation of a privacy law. While cyber insurance has largely been about data breach response, our product is designed to protect our insureds should they inadvertently violate a privacy law,” said Scott Schleicher, Underwriting Manager for XL Group’s Cyber & Technology team..

Expanded coverage includes:

• A coverage extension for outsourced providers including cloud providers
• Expanded privacy and security protection to include confidential business information in addition to protected health information and personally identifiable information (PII), which now also has a broader definition in the new form
• Enhanced privacy regulatory coverage, including consumer redress amounts
• Payment Card Industry fines and assessments coverage can be added by endorsement

The product is also designed to respond to technology errors and omissions and media liability acts. XL Group’s cyber coverages are provided by, Indian Harbor Insurance Company, a XL subsidiary.

“With new technologies and new uses for them, cyber risks are extending their reach,” added Mr. Coletti. “To help address businesses concerns more thoroughly, we’ve broadened our policy terms and added a host of additional coverages to build one of the most comprehensive cyber insurance forms out on the market.”

XL Group partners with leading third-party breach response providers to assist policy holders in dealing with a data breach. Through legal counsel, credit and ID monitoring, data breach notification and call center support and computer forensics, experienced experts will provide services to ensure the breach is handled thoroughly and compliantly.