The American Bar Association is concerned about insurance being out of date in a networked world:
Most businesses have insurance designed to cover them if a building burns down or someone trips and falls in the parking lot – yesterday’s risks. Today’s businesses may suffer intangible losses resulting from computer viruses, hacker attacks, and theft of confidential information. Current commercial general liability policies do not cover damage to intangible property. They exclude nearly all intellectual property exposures, and personal and advertising injury coverage for website designers. Internet search, access, content and service providers and companies that host bulletin boards are also excluded. Crime policies require identification of the perpetrator and cover only money, securities, and other tangible property. As a result, insurers are rejecting policyholders’ claims under traditional insurance.
This program examines the 21st century risk environment and the heightened legislative and regulatory focus of network security and privacy. It shows how traditional insurance policies fall short in protecting against 21st century risks, and identifies a new generation of specialty insurance coverage that can protect your clients against those risks.
That’s the course description for a teleconference and webcast the ABA is going to hold on 11 January, called 21st Century Risks Are Your Clients Covered?
Thanks to Phil for the pointer.
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In my experience, most of the information technology insurances targeted at intangible property (often sloppily called “hacker insurances”) are not worth their money. Insurance companies have a very clear picture of, as the ABA says, “yesterday’s risk”. They have practically no clue when it comes to “today’s risk”, which is why they will exclude coverage wherever possible.
Come to think of it, I don’t think insuring against incidents is a good idea, anyway. It would be way better to accept the risk and minimize it with efficient best practices – something I have seen neglected in favor of technological solutions more than enough…