BROXIO: ADDRESS THE COVID-19 RISKS

The entire world is closely following the development of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The economy is already starting to feel the effect of limited travel, government bans of public gatherings, and widely applied "work from home policy."

While the impact of limited movement of people, goods and materials in the real sector is obvious, it is less so evident for the service sector. Work from home policy is not new for big part of the companies in the service sector but it is still not set as a standard. While some companies have adequate infrastructure and policy for remote work, very few have the capacity to support 90%+ of the employees working off-site. In addition, according to the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, cybercrime rate during the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically increased. The size of such losses can be significant. In 2019, Ponemon Institute released a report which states that it takes British companies 172 days on average to discover data breaches and an average 72 days to contain them. This results in average cyber data breach costs in UK of 4.5 million euros. While we do not have the exact figures for Bulgaria, the above numbers are staggering. All the above represent a particularly good reason to consider protecting company's balance sheet with proper cyber insurance. An insurance cover could be the dividing line between company bankruptcy and its survival.

A professionally designed Cyber Insurance policy can assess various aspects of the data breaches related costs. In a cyber event these costs may be divided in two major groups – own costs and costs related to third party claims. A good cyber policy will address both.

Own costs include any cost which you incur during administrative proceedings following a breach in data security. This aspect is particularly relevant for personal data breach which is now governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is being closely monitored by state authorities. Other own costs may cover pro-active forensic services which will help you confirm an alleged data breach, costs for repairing personal or company reputation, costs for notifying affected data subjects, costs related to restoration of electronic data. Lastly it may also cover revenue loss due to computer network interruption.

On the other hand, costs related to claims from third parties include claims made following a personal or corporate loss of information, claims made by a third party to a company which outsourced part of their activities to you. Proper cover would typically include protection for infecting a third-party network or computer code with a virus, or denial of access of an authorized third party to its own data. It may also include coverage for wrongful appropriation of network access codes or last but not least a disclosure of third-party's personal data by an employee of your company.

Broks Innovations Ltd is a registered insurance broker by the Financial Supervision Commission in Bulgaria as per license number № 551-ЗБ as of 18.09.2017. We are specialized in advising and designing insurance programs specifically in cyber insurance, professional liability and complex business interruption policies.

Insuring cyber related risks with a good insurer instead of retaining the risk for you to manage is now more needed than ever. While insurance will not replace the standard IT security measures, cyber protection will be a life saver in case of a sizable data breach event. Reach out to our professional consultants to get a cover which best fits your specific needs.

Sofia, 2 Nikolay Haytov St, ent. 2, fl. 7

phone: +359 876 007 717

office@broxio.bg

www.broxio.eu

Stilian Milanov is the Managing Partner of Broks Innovations Ltd. He has 15 years of expertise in the insurance sector taking various senior and executives roles in AIG and Allianz. He has MA in insurance and social science and a Diploma in Insurance by Chartered Insurance Institute in London, UK. In 2017, he co-founded Broks Innovations Ltd., a broker focused on helping clients address specific insurance needs in the area of cyber, professional liability and complex construction or property covers. The broker is the only one which provides a self-service digital platform for organizing online insurance tenders for additional healthcare insurance cover of a company's employees.