Cyber Liability Insurance

With the increased popularity and use of the internet, more and more businesses and private individuals in southwest Florida are creating their own websites. It is hard to find a Florida business today of any size that has not created a website to increase its sales volume. The internet is growing so rapidly that the laws governing it, and public awareness of those laws, are slow to catch up. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has recently developed the Florida Computer Crime Center to deal with computer-related crimes.

Many Florida businesses are not aware that the owner of a website has legal obligations toward the people who use that website, because in the eyes of the law a website owner is viewed as being a publisher. Cyber law is a specialty that has developed in recent years to handle breach of privacy, data breaches and other risks that come from using a website on the internet. Because of the number of people who sign onto a website on a daily basis, the number of potential litigants can be staggering, and a lawsuit can prove to be very costly. The general liability insurance that many Florida businesses have is not comprehensive enough to include the specialized risks that come from owning a website on the internet. This makes cyber liability insurance an important coverage to have.

Cyber liability insurance provides coverage against the legal cost of lawsuits placed against a company for claims of defamation, slander, libel and copyright infringement, which are risks normally associated with being a publisher. In addition, it covers a business for the specialized risks that are unique to the internet itself, such as invasion of privacy, breach or loss of data, and virus attacks that may occur to third parties who use their website.

Because the threats of utilizing the internet are evolving and increasing, it is important to choose an insurance company in southwest Florida that has an understanding of this specialty in insurance coverage, and is keeping up with new laws that are being developed against such threats.