Over the course of 2018, we saw a number of pieces of data breach legislation come into play, from the GDPR in Europe to the Digital Privacy Act in Canada. In some territories, like Australia where they introduced the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, this led to a spike in privacy breach claims as overly-cautious businesses notified more breaches than was probably necessary.
While these pieces of legislation are important, we should avoid seeing cyber insurance exclusively through this lens. It’s important to stress that while notification laws might prompt consideration of cyber amongst businesses and seem to be driving claims, cyber insurance is not just about covering the losses associated with a data breach. It’s much broader than that and our data shows it provides cover for a whole host of cyber-related risks, ranging from theft of funds and cyber extortion to system damage and business interruption.