Auto Software Outage Turns Policyholders To Cyber Coverage

Rukesh Korde’s commentary was included in a Law360 article exploring the effects of a ransomware attack against auto software company CDK Global on the cyber insurance industry.

Rukesh advised that "if you're a company that's facing real financial distress as a result of an outage like this, that's really the situation that you bought insurance to protect yourself against, and so you want to get that insurance into play as quickly as you can.” He said that accounting for how much a business would have earned absent an interruption is one of the more difficult questions posed by contingent business interruption claims.

Rukesh added that policyholders need to "think very carefully about the assumptions that get loaded into insurance company explanations of why they're limiting coverage or reducing the amount of the claim, because those assumptions are not always valid."

Discussing other considerations companies should make in light of a cyber incident, Rukesh noted that, beyond submitting required documentation, policyholders should convey the urgency of their financial situation to obtain payments as soon as possible. “It's not a legal requirement, but I think it's helpful to be in a collaborative mode with your insurance companies so they understand what's going on with you,” he said.

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