Is it me or is it starting to feel like the Wild West around here? The news of major losses from hack attacks, the modern day “bank robbery”, just keep coming. This time its Citibank. Earlier this month, the bank announced that hackers stole the credit card details of more than 360,000 U.S. customers. Because these things have to play out, it’s only now that Citibank has been able to put a figure – $2.7 million – on their losses. Of the 360,000 credit card details stolen, about 3,400 were hit with fraud.
The $2.7m figure is for the fraud only, however. The greatest loss from these cases is the cost of notifying customers that their card may have been compromised, the cost of card and card number reissuance for all 360,000 customers and the man hours involved in doing both of these activities and more. So while $2.7m is a lot to swallow even when you’re a large global bank, losses for the breach overall could easily reach into the tens of millions.
What’s the moral of the story? Whether big company or small, make sure virus and hack attacks are covered in your insurance policy. While Citibank could swallow the costs, they probably don’t want to and many smaller firms could not.
See the full story on PCWorld.com
Insuring for hacking and viruses is important. That’s why we can include it in all of our policies. To learn more, click here.
