Why As an Attorney You Need Cyber Liability Insurance
Posted on May 01, 2018Cyber breaches are increasing in every sector or business in the United States and around the world. This includes cyber attacks on law firms, large and small. What this means for you, as an attorney, is that you are facing greater need than ever before for cyber liability insurance.
Why is Cyber Liability Insurance So Important for Law Firms?
Lawyers are particularly vulnerable when it comes to data breaches. For one thing, and perhaps most importantly, you have a responsibility to your clients to protect their information. Unfortunately, any information that is transmitted via electronic methods, stored on your computers, or sent through email make easy targets for hackers interested in creating chaos, causing financial harm, and destroying the reputation of you, as a sole attorney, or your firm.
These are just a few reasons attorneys are especially vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breaches:
- You have access to proprietary information. This includes things like patent information, design information, trademarked formulas, and so much more. Your clients demand and expect absolute discretion and protection when they share their most vital secrets with you. They expect their information to be safe in your hands.
- You have access to their financial holdings, investments, and secrets. Not only is this information private and not to be shared with the general public, but it is also information that could be used to cause irreparable financial harm in the wrong hands.
- You have access to details that may expose risks or vulnerabilities to your clients’ competitors.
- You have access to information detailing intimate details of your clients’ lives and the lives of others.
If this information finds its way into the wrong hands, it can be embarrassing to your clients, not to mention financially devastating. Each one resulting in real harm that is attached to monetary values.
If that isn’t enough, being the victim of a data breach is a public relations nightmare for your firm since current clients and those considering your firm in the future will all wonder if their information is safe with you.
What Does Cyber Liability Insurance Do?
Cyber liability insurance isn’t merely about paying your court costs if your case should go to trial or any settlements or awards made against you. Though, you know better than most, that this is a highly beneficial aspect of cyber liability insurance.
Your cyber insurance policy also helps to ensure your practice can survive the crisis at hand by offering continuity in the following manners:
- Crisis management. This involves addressing how you deliver information about the data breach, notify your clients, and mitigate the scope of the breach and damage done. It also discusses information about how you will protect your clients in the future with credit monitoring and other services.
- Business interruption protection. This provides financial protection for your business to cover costs while you are unable to operate due to computers being quarantined and examined, forensically, to determine the full scope and scale of the breach.
- Recovery of data. Some data breaches involve the deletion or theft of data without that information being used for anything other than extortion attempts, ransomware, etc. Recovering this information can be costly but necessary in some instances.
In addition to cyber liability insurance, attorneys should consider risk mitigation services that help reduce their exposure to data breaches and hacking. Some insurance providers offer this service while others provide law firms with a list of resources designed to help them reduce their exposures to risk. The key is to minimize your risks with preventative measures while covering your assets with adequate insurance coverage.
Work with an independent insurance agency that understands the cyber liability risks unique to attorneys. Make sure you get the right type of protection and the right amount of coverage to protect your practice now and as your risks and exposures grow. With constantly increasing threats, this is protection your practice can’t afford to be without.