Why You Need a Cyber Liability Insurance Program

By Cass Jacoby. 

One of the biggest risks your company currently faces is cyber liability, here is why you should double-check your cyber security insurance coverage now rather than later. 

Cyber security is most likely something at the back of your mind that you know you should focus more on but can’t seem to find the time to look into. With all of the work that goes into running a roofing company and putting on roofs, the last thing on most contractors’ minds is cyber liability. 

In Season 4, Episode 38 of the Roofing Road Trips podcast, Heidi J. Ellsworth meets with cyber insurance expert Andy Metzler of Acrisure and Cheryl Ambrose of the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) to talk about NRCA’s Cyber Liability Insurance Program. The NRCA has partnered with Acrisure to offer members insurance policies that cover business interruption exposures, privacy risks posed by storing sensitive data and costs associated with cyber incident response. 

“It’s a risk that lives in the shadows,” says Cheryl. “But it's really surfacing to become more and more... Everything's becoming so digitized.” 

“It's something that is such a new risk, it is not a traditional risk that we've talked about for the last 100 years in the roofing industry,” agrees Andy. “A lot of us have data in our systems. If you think about it, there's lots of invoices, and transactions, and data that companies are now storing that they didn't traditionally store...every time you have a system, or something that integrates with a system, you have an exposure there, and, obviously, that's just something that's becoming more and more prevalent.” 

The more that we rely on technology within our businesses, the more, unfortunately, we expose ourselves to potential cyber-attacks. While crime liability packages are common among contractors, cyber protection is rare. We don’t often think about protecting ourselves from cyber-attacks until we have been targeted, which is why the NRCA Cyber Liability Insurance Program was started.  

The program offers insurance policies that cover business interruption exposures (any business reliant on technology for its day-to-day operations has this exposure), as well as the privacy risks posed by storing sensitive data and costs associated with cyber incident response. 

“It is all about being proactive and not waiting until disaster happens to find out that you have possibly a gap in coverage,” says Cheryl. “I would really encourage [roofers] to go back and double-check [their coverage].” Many roofing professionals don’t recognize these risks may not be adequately covered under another policy. Knowing the level of risk and protection your company has when it comes to cyber security is critical to making informed business decisions.  

“One of the things that's great about this cyber liability insurance program is it comes with a lot of tools to help companies look and prepare for cyber risks,” Andy says. “Insurance companies don't want to have to pay claims, so they want companies to be educated and to give you as many tools as possible, and this program seeks to help protect contractors. The key to avoiding cyber risks is in preventative action.” 

Listen to the podcast to learn more about student networking in the roofing industry, and the many opportunities that exist for our younger generations 

Learn more about NRCA in its directory, or visit www.nrca.net. 

About Cass  

Cass works as a reporter/writer for RoofersCoffeeShop, AskARoofer and MetalCoffeeShop. When she isn’t writing about roofs, she is putting her Master degree to work writing about movies and dancing with her plants.