When Cyber Claims Arise, Don't Overlook Traditional Insurance Coverage

Originally published in Anderson Kill's Policyholder Advisor & Alert, April 2016

A decision handed down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals this week highlights that traditional insurance policies still provide valuable insurance coverage for data breaches and other cyber-related losses.

While CGL policies in particular increasingly add exclusions seeking to exclude cyber claims, companies faced with fallout from a data breach or other cyber loss should still scrutinize their existing non-cyber policies because:

• there may be no such exclusion; their inclusion is not universal;
• there are a variety of exclusions that are not uniform in terms of their exclusionary effect; and