It seems there is insurance for everything, from pet insurance, to home and car insurance, insurance companies offer just about any kind of insurance to cover anything of value, you can even insure favorite fantasy football players!  What about internet liability insurance? Surely your internet based business, company or assets are worth insuring, aren't they?

The web is an intriguing place, offers a wealth of information and seemingly endless possibilities. Web sites are not static pages anymore, they are powered by powerful applications that deliver dynamic pages, communicate with remote vendors and payment gateways and also store quite a bit of information on end users.  What would happen, if your web site or IT organization was hacked?  If this is a non-public organization, one that doesn't store user data (is there such a place anymore), there is still the possibility of losing valuable information, code, financial data, etc. What if your business is client facing and you do store sensitive user data?

This is not good, Houston - we have a problem

It's troubling enough to worry over what proprietary company information might have been compromised, but  if you are hacked or "breached" and store valuable user data - you have a big problem. The problem with getting hacked is this: It's relatively easy to see what was destroyed or altered, but it's next to impossible to know what has been seen or copied.  The right thing to do is to notify every single person who had personal data stored in your system and make them aware that your site was compromised and so was their data.

Iceberg, straight ahead

When users find out their data has been compromised the response might make you fell  like your ship is sinking. Users lose faith in your company, possibly stop using your service and this adversely affects your business. If you buy insurance to cover a $20,000 car, why would you not have insurance to cover a business that is so much more valuable?  Outside of insurance companies, I don't think anyone is a fan of the insurance racket, err business, so, is it essential to have insurance for your web/IT organization? Only you can decide what your business is worth and if it is worth insuring.

Hartford Insurance Group (HIG) was one of the first companies to offer "Cyber" insurance, here is a listing of key coverage:

• Data Privacy - with a broader definition that offers protection for data breaches by the company or third parties - such as vendors doing work on behalf of the company - involving the loss of personally identifiable information (PPI) or company confidential information. Coverage is also available for breach of data privacy laws involving citizens of European Union countries. Both notification and credit monitoring expenses are available in a single insuring agreement to give businesses greater flexibility in how they respond to data breaches.
• E-media and Internet Liability -which addresses online defamation, advertising, libel and slander-related exposures as well as emerging Web 2.0 liabilities created by casual users of a company's Web site.
• Network Security - for failure of security measures to prevent a denial of service, unauthorized access, theft of electronic data, inadvertent transmission of a virus or other malicious code. 
• Infringement of Intellectual Property (IP) Rights - for copyright or trademark liability as it relates to online text, videos, images, blogs and advertising
• Professional Services - for ancillary errors and omissions, negligent acts performed for others for a fee.
• Network Business Interruption -which replaces loss of income due to a covered network outage or loss.
• Cyber Investigation Expense -for unbudgeted extra expense incurred to investigate a data privacy or network security wrongful act.
• Cyber Extortion - for expenses incurred in the event of an extortion threat to cause a data privacy or network security wrongful act.

Take a very close look at those last two bullet points, Cyber Investigation Expense and Cyber Extortion. These two items alone are probably not something people think about, even if they are worried about getting hacked.