Hi! Let's Talk About Cyber Insurance.
I'm Skits, and I work with Jerry over at Shared Knowledge Technical Solutions. Your insurance agent mentioned cyber insurance, or you got a renewal form asking whether you have multi-factor authentication, and now you're wondering if this is one more thing you actually need or one more thing somebody's trying to sell you.
Fair question. In about 12 minutes: what cyber insurance actually is, what it covers, whether a business like yours needs it — and the part that trips people up, what insurers now require before they'll cover you. No sales pitch. I'm not an insurance agent, and by the end you'll know exactly what to ask yours. Let's introduce ourselves first.
Here for yourself, not a business?
Let's clear that up first, because the answer's a little different for you. Individuals usually don't buy a standalone cyber insurance policy — it's mostly a business product. What you'd ask your agent about instead is a personal cyber or identity-theft add-on to your homeowners or renters insurance. Plenty of carriers offer one now, and it can cover things like identity theft, online fraud, and even ransomware on your home computer.
Here's the gap worth knowing about scams: your bank will usually refund a stolen card number, but if a scammer talks you into sending the money yourself — a wire, a Zelle transfer, gift cards — that's often not covered by anyone. Closing that gap is exactly what a personal cyber add-on (plus good habits) is for. The rest of this course leans business, but the ideas underneath are yours too — stick with me.
Before we dig in — where do you stand on cyber insurance right now?
No wrong answer, and no sales trap. It just tells me how much to explain as we go.
So What Actually IS Cyber Insurance?
Your regular business insurance covers the physical world. A customer slips in your shop, a pipe bursts, someone drives into your sign — general liability and property cover that. Here's the catch most owners never notice: those policies usually exclude the digital disasters.
Cyber insurance is the policy built for the digital ones: a hacker locks your files and demands a ransom, a scammer tricks your bookkeeper into wiring money, customer data leaks out of your systems. You'll also hear it called cyber liability insurance — same thing.
The one-sentence version
Regular insurance covers what happens to your building and your equipment. Cyber insurance covers what happens to your data, your systems, and your money when someone attacks them.
The Part Nobody Tells the Small Guys
There's a comforting myth that hackers only go after big companies — the banks, the retailers you see in the news. It's backwards.
Most attacks aren't personal. Nobody sat down and picked your business. Attackers run automated software that scans thousands of businesses at once, looking for an unlocked door. A small business is often the one that gets in, because it has fewer defenses and no full-time IT person watching the gate.
Why this matters to you specifically
A big company can absorb a bad week. For a small business, one ransomware hit or one fraudulent wire can be the kind of loss you don't come back from. That's the whole reason this coverage exists — not because you're a target, but because you can't self-insure the way a giant can.
Skits' Tip
Think of it like the deadbolt on your shop door. You don't install it because you expect a specific burglar by name. You install it because the door's easier to lock than the loss is to swallow.
Quick Check — Covered, or Not?
Rapid round. For each one, make the call: is this the kind of thing cyber insurance is built to help with? Tap your answer and I'll tell you right away.
Cyber insurance — would it help here?
A hacker locks your files and demands a ransom to unlock them.
A pipe bursts overnight and floods your office, ruining the computers.
A fake email fools your bookkeeper into wiring money to a scammer.
Your customer list — names and emails — leaks out in a hack.
That's the groundwork.
You know what cyber insurance is, why your regular policy probably doesn't cover this, and why ‘we're too small to be a target’ is exactly backwards. Next up: what a cyber policy actually pays for — and the gaps that surprise people at claim time.
Click "What It Covers" below when you're ready.