Zurich Insurance Responds to International Demand for Comprehensive Cyber Policy

Zurich have launched their ‘Security and Privacy’ policy and ‘DigitalResolve’, a cyber-protection policy and a global breach response service that will support companies facing cyber risks.

It’s never been more important to protect a company’s balance sheets and reputations from cyber risk. Over the past decade we have seen an increase in the costs to organisations as a result of cybercrime and despite advances in cyber security it is clear the hacker is currently winning the battle. Therefore, to protect and help organisations get back to business following a breach, Zurich has developed ‘Security and Privacy‘ protection and ‘DigitalResolve’.
Zurich’s research highlighted that outside of the US global companies main cyber concern was their first party exposures as a result of a breach rather than their potential liabilities.

For this reason ‘Security and Privacy Protection’ coverage has been specifically developed to cover these first party exposures as well as cover for 3rd party liabilities and includes a new cover to provide loss of income following a data breach or damage to reputation.

‘Zurich Security and Privacy Protection’ also includes a global breach response service called ‘DigitalResolve’. Following a breach, Zurich clients will be provided with a single dedicated Incident Manager, with 24/7/365 availability to manage the resources needed to recover from a damaging cyber event. The ‘DigitalResolve’ team of global trusted expert providers, co-ordinate and triage the cyber-attack incident response from its first notification right through to its successful conclusion.

Jeremy Smith, Head of Technology, Security and Privacy at Zurich commented: “When we set out to develop a Security & Privacy Policy we were keen not to follow the status quo and look to provide cover and services that we believed matched our customer’s needs. Our experience showed us that the majority of cyber polices out there focused on Privacy and network security liability. Although the liability landscape is changing, so far we have not yet seen liabilities emanating out of data breaches.

“This is simply a feature of the US market place and holds little relevance here. On this basis historically the only really meaningful and transferable part of a data breach was privacy breach costs. After studying all the component costs of a data breach the major cost component that was not being transferred by insurance was the loss in revenue or customer churn following a data breach and this is what we are now looking to include. The other area that we were keen to develop was the breach response offering. DigitalResolve is a truly global end-to-end, integrated breach response solution involving an ecosystem of vendors to assist global organisations following a breach.”

Benedict Burke, Senior Vice President, Global Client Development at Crawford & Company comments: “This represents a stand out and compelling value proposition. The outputs will be the minimisation of the impact of a cyber-related event on Zurich customers’ business operations and brand reputation. It is Crawford’s intention to maintain a position at the forefront of innovation in claims solutions and our collaboration with Zurich on their Security and Privacy Protection product is the latest example of this.”

Gail Cook, Head of Financial Lines at Zurich UK concludes: “As cyber risks become increasingly frequent and severe, cyber insurance is playing an increasingly bigger part in a company’s overall risk management strategy. Buyers are now becoming increasingly more sophisticated looking for polices that not only cover them for data breaches but also for non-physical damage business interruption and reputational risk. I’m proud to be launching such an innovative insurance product which further demonstrates Zurich’s longstanding reputation for delivering robust, market leading insurance protections to the real economy.”