Cyber Insurance for Doctors

Cyber insurance for doctors – Do physicians need cyber insurance?

How much cyber insurance should doctor’s offices purchase?

Why is cyber an important coverage for healthcare professionals?

Today, cyber poses one of the greatest threats to businesses of all types, and doctors are no exception.I’m going to answer these questions regarding physicians and cyber risks.

Cyber insurance – can be a confusing form of insurance protection and not every physician purchases it.

In this video and post, I’m going to focus on 4 key issues and if you have a question or issue related to cyber that I didn’t answer here, please feel free to reach out to me – that can be by phone or email.

I’m here to help you make more informed decisions around business insurance so ask away!

Okay, cyber insurance.

If you’ve ever looked at a cyber insurance policy or proposal you may see 10 or more coverage parts and when you try and understand what’s going on your head starts to spin.

I’m not going to go deep into the policy language or coverages, but instead, focus on 4 separate elements that I think doctors’ offices should be considering when it comes to cyber risk.

The first is the huge volume of personal, private health data that physicians hold within their systems, which often is a desirable target for hackers.

When that data is exposed, leaked, or stolen during a hack your practice faces potential lawsuits for failing to maintain safe data practices.

With HIPAA confidentiality what it is, the cost of those lawsuits can be enormous.

This coverage protects your practice from these types of lawsuits.

Number 2 on my list is Ransomware.

This is an event where hackers deploy malware to your network and seize control of it, holding it ransom until a ransom payment is made.

Today those demands are growing by the month and no other form of insurance steps in to help negotiate payment and execute a payment to hackers to restore your systems. Once paid, there’s no guarantee that data will be restored.

Moreover, during that downtime, several issues need to be considered:

  • Patient records are locked – how will you treat or even see patients?
  • Prescription drugs may not be refilled or ordered without those patient files.
  • Your own practice’s income will cease until you can see patients, and what if you can’t restore backups or get your data back from hackers?
    This can result in a significant business interruption claim.
  • lastly, ransomware can not only affect computers but also diagnostic devices connected to your network, further crimping your ability to care for patients.

Cyber insurance protects your practice from that loss of income.

Number 3 on my list for physicians is Wire Transfer Fraud.

Social engineering and wire transfer frauds are growing more and more sophisticated, tricking even the most aware employees into handing over money to the bad guys.

While cybercrime coverage for fraudulent wire transfers is limited in most policies to $250,000 it still provides a generous limit to protect you from this form of fraud.

Last on my list is claims assistance.

When a cyber event occurs and you’ve got a short window to respond to dozens of issues regarding your legal obligations, how to restore data, how to safeguard your network, how to get back in business, how to prevent further damage, how do you notify your patients of a breach, etc?

The good news is that most cyber insurance policies provide clients with a breach coach and dedicated claim resources when cyber events occur.

The good news is that your event is not the first rodeo for these specialists.

They know what the right steps are, who the right people are, and what needs to be done to respond.

I recently did another video on cyber insurance that talks about costs and how you get it that you can view here:

Cyber Insurance – Do you need it? How do you get it? How much does it cost?

In terms of costs, a $1M cyber policy for a medium-sized doctor’s office is probably going to run in the range of $5,000 to $9,000 a year.

If you’d like to get a firm quote based on your circumstances please give me a call and I can turn that around for you in about an hour.

What’s needed in terms of underwriting to get cyber insurance?

As you can imagine getting cyber insurance today the underwriting requirements are pretty stringent.

Your security posture must be up to date, and you need to be deploying MFA or multi-factor authentication on email and other critical access points.

As a specialist in Cyber Insurance, we represent the top underwriters in the marketplace and can work with you to secure the best coverage.

Have other questions or issues I can assist you with?

Give me a call or drop me an email and let’s chat.

Thanks,

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