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With more employees working from home than ever, agents should be checking in with their clients to be sure they have adequate protection against the high costs of security breaches with cybersecurity coverage.

For one reason or another, many businesses are now working with remote employees for the long term. This may happen because a business is located in a COVID hotspot, or because during COVID, many of their employees wanted to stay home. It could even have been a planned change; remote working was on the rise even before the pandemic. But whatever the reason, the change should prompt important insurance considerations for your clients.

What Is Cybersecurity Insurance?

Not all businesses currently have cybersecurity coverage, even those in fields that would normally need it. It’s incumbent upon insurance agents to explain the benefits of cybersecurity coverage and why a business should get it before they run into a security problem and experience the significant losses that could come with it.

Cybersecurity insurance generally covers certain types of cyber incidents, including:

• Business email compromise scams
• Fund-transfer fraud
• Ransomware attacks
• Internal threats

However, these usually aren’t the only covered events, just some of the most common. Cybersecurity insurance could be used for many types of cyber-attacks. The point of the insurance is to cover related losses and minimize business interruption in the aftermath of a security breach.

Why Do Remote Workers Represent Higher Risk?

Many businesses that have online components and store sensitive or proprietary information can benefit from cybersecurity insurance, no matter where their workers are located. But at-home and remote workers present additional risks.

When workers are in an office, the company can take certain steps to minimize the risk of cyber threats. They can create a secure network for employees to use. They can encrypt company equipment. They can enforce certain security best practices and visually observe that their employees are following them.

All of this gets more difficult when employees are working off-site. It’s possible for employers to monitor employees remotely to make sure that they’re using the recommended practices, and there are solutions for using more secure networks remotely. But putting many employees in many different places is just inherently less safe. When there are more cracks in the system, it’s just more likely that somebody will fall through those cracks.

How to Talk to Clients About Cybersecurity Insurance

If a client doesn’t have dedicated cybersecurity insurance, they need to get it if they’re transferring to an all or mostly remote workforce. And even a client who does have dedicated cybersecurity insurance may need to update it, as increasing the number of remote workers increases their risk profile.

When talking to your client about their current cybersecurity needs, make sure to mention:

• Cost of legal fees in the event of a cybersecurity breach
• Cost of investigating a breach
• Reputational harm of a breach and the cost to mitigate it
• Liability costs
• Business disruption and lost revenue
• Potential costs of having to pay an extortion fee to ransomware hackers

The combination of these costs and losses is what cybersecurity insurance can help a business avoid.

Want to learn how to better help your clients as they make decisions during the COVID pandemic? American Agents Alliance can help. Contact us to learn more.