INSURANCE POLICY LANGUAGE: IMPACT OF COMPUTER MALWARE ON TRADITIONAL NOTIONS OF ‘WAR’
Your company’s cyber insurance programme may not be as broad as it was last year, and the reduction in coverage could end up being significant for your business.
The market for cyber insurance coverage has grown dramatically in recent years. But as demand (and insurer losses) have increased, the market has also tightened. For many, higher prices and narrower coverage terms have been the norm for the past few years.
One of the most high-profile consequences of that market tightening is a recent effort by some insurers to take steps to limit insurance coverage for ‘state sponsored’ or ‘state backed’ cyber incidents: those that are perpetrated or alleged to be perpetrated by a government or nation state, or its agents or representatives, against another state. For example, in 2017, the NotPetya malware was introduced into computers in Ukraine through a malicious backdoor in a popular commercial tax accounting software. The NotPetya malware impacted many, many computers in Ukraine, including those used by the Ukrainian government. The malware also spread well beyond Ukraine, impacting some of the largest companies in the world and causing billions of dollars in losses in the process. Certain governments, including the US, ultimately accused the Russian government of being responsible for the release of the NotPetya malware, but did not make the evidence upon which they based that attribution public.
Oct-Dec 2023 Issue
Jenner & Block LLP