6 December 2012News

Ironshore introduces SME IT coverage

Ironshore’s professional liability division, IronPro is introducing a Highly Protected Information (HPI) product that will provide IT coverage and specialist assistance to SMEs affected by cyber attacks.

The company identified the SME sector as being particularly vulnerable to issues such as malware and network attacks, with over two-thirds of reported attacks occurring at companies with between 11 and 100 employees, according to a 2012 survey by Verizon Communications.

Ironshore believes that its offering will fulfil a need in that area, with the insurer arguing that many SMEs would be better off investing in loss prevention, rather than trying to recover from data breaches.

The company’s HPI coverage includes: “free limited access to a third party on-call chief security officer, in addition to a privacy breach coach. Ironshore policyholders who take advantage of these HPI endorsement loss mitigation services may also be entitled to certain premium credits on account of their diligent loss prevention efforts.”

The coverage also includes “reimbursement for notification expenses for up to 10 million affected individuals; and privacy breach expenses in addition to the policy aggregate limit”. The offering is available to middle market firms in retail, hospitality, financial institutions, and professional services industries with minimum annual revenue of $10 million.