Cyber – Extortion

Cyber-extortion

April 19, 2021

Cyber-attacks are the fastest-growing threat to modern businesses, with billions of attempts by hackers every year. 

In this month’s Cyber Blog from MGAM, we look at how the MGAM Cyber Policy could provide support when you need it most.

What happened?

The Insured operates a prestigious private school. They contacted the Cyber Hotline to report an ongoing ransomware attack. 

Where is this covered?

Extortion is an insured event under the Insuring Clauses of the MGAM Cyber policy.

Coverage intent

If you are the victim of an extortion threat to damage or restrict access to your network or data or to release data previously obtained from your network, the policy will pay the costs incurred to handle the threat and pay any monies (including cryptocurrency) as required to eliminate the threat.

What was the outcome of the claim?

An Incident Manager was appointed on a without prejudice basis to assist the Insured. 

Within a 2-hour SLA, the Incident Manager arranged for a specialist IT vendor from our insurers panel with experience in successfully remediating ransomware incidents to assist the Insured. 

The specialist IT firm communicated with the bad actor(s) and, upon further investigation, remediated the incident.

It was found that the ransomware had encrypted a large proportion of the data held within the operating servers in addition to the backup server.  Due to the fast actions of the IT firm, the network was back in operation in less than a week.  Legal support was provided with a notification to the UK Information Commissioners Office.

The Insured received approximately £40,000 in indemnity under the Policy for IT and legal costs.