If you have recently renewed or purchased a commercial insurance product, chances are your broker brought up the topic of purchasing privacy breach coverage. Insurers have responded to the increase in breaches by developing products to help address some of the costs their customers face following a breach.
Coverages available often include: remediation expenses such as notifying customers, credit & fraud monitoring expenses, business interruption to cover loss of income related to the breach, breach counselling, and crisis management.
The threat of privacy breaches in Canada is growing and the cost to Canadian companies has increased. The average cost in 2016 was $6.11 million. Canada has highest direct cost at $81 US per record compromised .The cost of the loss of customer trust is approximately $2.8million US.
Worldwide, the number of records stolen is staggering. There are 6,206,400 records lost/stolen every day, 258,602 records every hour, 4,310 record stolen every minute, and 72 records stolen every second.
Privacy breach can include the theft of personal customer or employee information such as social insurance numbers, bank account numbers, credit/debit card information, and driver’s license numbers.
Any business that handles or stores confidential customer or employee data should be aware of their risks of a privacy breach. Even the best cyber security measures cannot fully protect against a breach. A breach not only can occur due to a computer hack but also through storing/lost devices, improper disposal of office documents or equipment.
TOP DATA BREACHES
According to the Breach Level Index, these are some of the more recent large data breaches:
When: 2018
#Records Stolen: 2,100,000,000
Type of Breach: Identity Theft
Equifax
When: 2017
# Records Stolen: 147,900,000
Type of Breach: Identity Theft
Reliance Jio
When: 2017
# Records Stolen: 120,000,000
Type of Breach: Account Access
Friend Finder Networks
When: 2016
# Records Stolen: 412,214,295
Type of Breach: Existential Data
Anthem Insurance Companies (Anthem Blue Cross)
When: 2015
# Records Stolen: 78,800,800
Type of Breach: Identity Theft
Yahoo
When: 2014
#Records stolen: 500,000,000
Type of Breach: Account Access
If you are interested in purchasing Privacy Breach Coverage, contact one of our commercial brokers today.