Bill Ridge, of Ridge Insurance Agency in Cranberry Township, said he has noticed a growing demand in requests for policies covering cyberattacks.

Add this to your list of worries: hackers breaking into your business.

And security experts warn that it’s a messy and expensive affair to deal with hacking.

“The list of damages is endless,” said Lisa Leach Goth, president of Charles Leach Insurance in New Bethlehem. She noted that hacking attempts such as phishing emails can lead to sensitive information being stolen, a company’s production line being shut down, or computer hardware being destroyed.

Bill Ridge of Ridge Insurance Agency in Cranberry Township cautioned about the cost of legal and financial fallout connected to a security breach.

“If a business has, let’s say 3,000 people’s information, and they get hacked; now that’s 3,000 people you have to buy credit monitoring services for along with all kinds of other costs.”

Ridge stressed that anyone can be targeted by hackers, even if they don’t have 3,000 employees.

“Everyone has an exposure. I don’t care if they’re a small or large company. And you need coverage for it,” he said. “A lot of these policies have a component of business interruption. So if you get locked out of your system, you are dealing with an income loss, and if you have business interruption coverage, then it’s covered. And you can buy cyber policy and not include business interruption. Now you’re out of all that income.”

Ridge has also noticed a steady rise in demand for this kind of coverage.

“It was already on the rise before the shutdown,” Ridge said. “This isn’t just a United States problem. This is a worldwide issue. The money involved in getting hacked is astronomical. Small businesses don’t have this kind of capital to deal with it. Everyone could be targeted. Every business should buy this kind of insurance.”

Goth said any company, big or small, is a potential target for hacking and that cyber-insurance liability packages can help businesses prepare and contend with cyberattacks.

“If your customer information is stolen, the state requires you to do certain things. Send out information to customers; you’re suppose to have a press release, legal fees, and all of that has costs attached to it.”

She continued, “We can provide an insurance program that not only pays the cost of all that, but one that also provides you with legal advice, forensic advice to see what happened.”

For the last two to three years, the Leach company has offered insurance packages to help with the costs associated with being hacked.

“And then the pandemic hit, everyone working from home, kids remote learning, everything escalated so the market for the insurance has tightened up,” Goth said. “Everybody wants it and there’s an increased amount of claims. There’s not an infinite supply of insurance especially for specific types of insurance so there’s a certain capacity, and when you start to hit your capacity more funds have to be raised to raise capacity.”

With the majority of businesses connected to the internet in some way, Goth said it only made sense to start offering cyber liability coverage.

“We protect your vehicles, your people, your property, but everything could shut down because we’re not protecting you in the cyber world,” Goth said.

She said that for some business owners, cyber protection might not seem like a necessity.

“The biggest misconception is that ‘it’s not going to happen to me.’ You think it’s going to happen to big businesses, but it’s huge in the small business space,” Goth said. “Small businesses may not have all the cyber protections in place. They’re an easier target. As companies get more sophisticated in cyber, they become harder to hack, but if we go to school districts or a mom-and-pop shop, they’re less likely to have all the protection in place. They’re an easier target. And cyber criminals hit quickly and disappear quickly. They don’t stick around.”