Brokers need only retweet the day’s headlines to clients to drive home the point that cyber risk coverage isn’t a luxury – but a necessity.
Hundreds of alleged usernames and passwords for the online file storage and document-sharing site Dropbox were published Monday on Pastebin, an anonymous information-sharing website.
According to
CBC News, the anonymous user – who claims to have hacked close to 7 million accounts – is calling for Bitcoin donations to fund the operation.
The anonymous Pastebin user says on the site that “we will keep releasing more to the public as donations come in, show your support.”
The fantastic growth of data breaches and cyber hacks means that brokers need to push commercial general liability (CGL) not only for their clients protection, but to avoid potential negligence on their part too.
“Insurance agents who are selling business owners’ policies or CGLs have some risk to their own E&O if they’re not presenting cyber insurance as a security or privacy product,” said Jeremy Barnett of
NAS Insurance. “If their clients suffer from a breach and are not covered under their CGL, the agent may have some potential negligence they’re liable for.”
A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey pegs the number of cyber security incidents at 42.8 million and rising, 48 per cent higher than in 2013.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden only last week advised those concerned about their privacy to “get rid of Dropbox” and cease using Facebook and Google
Dropbox says that it has not been hacked.
“These usernames and passwords were unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts,” a Dropbox spokesman told
Reuters in an email. “We'd previously detected these attacks and the vast majority of the passwords posted have been expired for some time now. All other remaining passwords have been expired as well.”
Dropbox boasts more than 200 million users six years after it was started. It has undergone tremendous growth with the concurrent growth of cloud technologies.
