SPRINGFIELD (WGGB) — It seems every week there’s another company that’s been hacked.
Who can forget the massive cyber-attack on Target just before the holiday’s in 2013, when a hacker stole more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers?
Then in April, hackers hit Home Depot and stole 56 million credit card accounts.
More recently, insurance giant Anthem fell victim, leaking 80 million customer social security numbers and other sensitive information.
Those are the big ones – but nearly any organization that uses technology to do business faces cyber risk.
That’s why there’s something called cyber liability insurance, and it’s not just for major retailers anymore – it’s also for small mom-and-pop businesses.
“If you’re a doctor’s office and you have 20,000 records and 10,000 of those records get breached, on the low side $100 a record, that’s a million bucks,” said Mike Levin of The Dowd Insurance Agencies of Holyoke. “If you don’t have insurance, you’re out of business.”
Levin says after a cyber-breach, it’s not just the lawsuits that business owners can be on the hook for -it’s also the investigation to figure out what happened, paying for credit monitoring for the victims, and even government fines.
Cyber liability insurance has been around for about a decade, but it’s only now starting to catch on as more and more businesses are targeted.