This is an urgent message to Business Managers and Firm Administrators to pay close attention when completing your cyber insurance questionnaires and surveys.
Recently, industry behemoth Travelers Insurance, asked a judge to rescind a policy due to misrepresentations by their client on their Cyber Insurance Questionnaire. In particular, they checked a box that they thought was correct (“Are all Admin accounts using multifactor authentication?”). As it turned out, their internal IT team was not compliant thereby allowing hackers to infiltrate the company. The CEO signed the form but it’s unclear whether he received advice from his IT team to validate the form before it was sent to the carrier.
Obviously, this will be a multi-million dollar claim that this particular business may not be able to financially survive. I bring this up because these questionnaires are becoming more complex and nuanced. Quite often, we are not consulted before they are returned to the insurance company. We offer this advice as a free service and are happy to help anyone complete them properly.
In the article on page 4 of this newsletter entitled “3 Times Businesses Were Denied Cyber Insurance Payouts,” we’ve included three incidents in the news that I feel all business owners need to be aware of.
Please contact us if you would like to review any past questionnaires you have already signed (it’s not too late to solve if you have not had a claim) or any you may receive in the future.
Yours for a more secure world,
Chuck Poole, CISSP
CEO
PalmTech Computer Solutions