Insurance cover against cyber crimes

Cyber crime is rising in India as more and more people access the internet for financial transactions, shopping, socialising and for online working. As a result, people end up giving lot of personal information and financial data without realising that by sharing such information and data, they become vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The types of cyber crimes range from duping people of money from their bank accounts, committing data breaches and demanding a ransom to restore the data to posting defamatory images or texts on the social media to damage reputation of the individuals, etc. Due to the rising number of cyber crimes, it is becoming imperative to have an insurance cover to protect against becoming a victim of such crime.

Now, two insurance companies, HDFC Ergo and Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, have come out with insurance policies to protect individuals from cyber crimes. HDFC Ergo’s E@Secure and Bajaj Allianz’s Cyber Safe policies offer insurance covers for many types of cyber crimes. These policies offer cover against cyber attacks and help the individuals to protect their reputation and provides relief to the insured in case of any data breach and losses arising from theft or misuse of any vital, financial or sensitive information.

The protection against cyber risks offered by the policies include unauthorised online transactions on bank account or through debit/credit card, damage caused to an individual’s reputation in case any harmful information is published over the internet by criminals and the costs of pursuing and defending legal actions against the offending individuals.

The types of cyber crimes covered by these policies include phishing, spoofing, extortion, damage and data breach caused by malware, cyber bullying, identity theft, cyber stalking, unauthorized online transaction, damage to reputation on social media, breach of privacy, etc. Of course, these policies specify sub-limits for claims that can be made for each of these crimes.