Hacking Insurance For Net Businesses

Spasemunki writes: "ZDNet is carrying a story today on the new partnership between Lloyd's of London and Counterpane to offer 'hacking insurance' to businesses with big, expensive net presence. Is this a good-for-business acknowledgement that even the best security framework has flaws, or companies stepping back from protecting their customers in favor of covering themselves? According to the CTO of Counterpane, e-commerce businesses 'don't have to prevent hacking; they have to manage their risks.' Interesting perspective from a security wonk." Of course, I'd rather have cracker insurance.

Comments

What will be interesting...

[wrenling]

Is to see how the claims get handled. If basic security proceedures were not followed (patches, closing off extraneous ports, etc) will the claim be paid? If they are paid, it will set a bad precendent, and give companies an excuse to maintain poor security, hire less qualified admins, and just file claims when bad stuff happens.

If they DO deny claims based on lack of basic preparedness, it could benefit the overall community by making it worth the company's pocketbook to make sure their admins are well trained, and have the equipment and software they need. Lawyers LOVE it when companies have insurance policies - it means larger settlements for them.

Symantics

[Kintanon]

I just can't wait for the first claim to come in:

Business: Look! We were attacked by hackers and lost X millions of dollars, call the insurance company!

Insurance Company: We're sorry, but you were attacked by CRACKERS, not Hackers, and you only purchased the Hacker insurance. It's an extra 50K a year for the Cracker insurance. Sorry. (Evil cackle)

Kintanon

Hacking insurance!

[11223]

Here at XYZ Insurance Corporation, we're proud to announce our new Hacking Insurance - protecting your business interests against hackers!

Hackers have been known to attempt to undermine your business interests with subversive activities like replacing IIS with Apache, and porting your product to Linux. Here's what we offer for protection:

• Instant Apache uninstall - we keep secured backup tapes that let you go back to your secure, responsive IIS environment instantly!
• Linux replacement - with proprietary tools we can search out Linux computers connected to your network and replace them with secured NT workstations!
• Source code security - we offer to help you write Windows-specific code so your developers can never switch to Linux if their hacker instincts flair up! As you can see, hacker insurance has many benifits. Protect your business investments today!