When your title agency began, your state required your business to have specific business liability, errors and omissions, and title insurance coverage to protect your customers and your brand.

But with a rapidly evolving cyberthreat landscape, including the growing risk of wire fraud and ransomware, title agencies may find that cyber insurance is also a must-have.

So why is having cyber insurance important for your title agency, and what considerations do you need to keep in mind when shopping for a policy?

Why is cyber insurance important for title agents?

As more of your work is being conducted in the digital world, your business is creating, collecting, storing, and processing more data from your partners, other real estate professionals, and your customers.

All of this data and the wire transfer account information used during the closing process is highly valuable to a cybercriminal looking to commit wire fraud or identity fraud or even just make some money off of the dark web.

Cyber insurance is there to provide coverage in the event of a data breach or cyberattack, helping to cover the losses resulting from events such as:

• Viruses or malware introduced into your network environment
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• Hacking or theft of data
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• Denial of service that impacts the provision of your business services
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• Ransomware

What are the key elements of cyber insurance?

Cyber insurance typically offers first-party coverage, which covers liability costs that directly impact your title business., including legal fees, civil penalties, regulatory fines, and recovery costs. Cyber insurance often also covers financial losses due to the inability to operate your business.

However, this coverage comes with specific requirements that your business must meet and agree to. For example, many cyber insurance providers and their underwriters require your business to meet basic cybersecurity requirements to qualify for and maintain coverage. 

Like other forms of insurance, businesses must also pay premiums on their cyber insurance policies. In fact, over the last several years as cyber incidents have increased, premiums have steadily increased as coverage has become more narrowly defined.

What are the limits of cyber insurance?

Although cyber insurance has received a lot of attention in the last couple of years, coverage levels and costs are still not standardized. This makes it even more important to know your cyber insurance coverage and your responsibilities to maintain it.

While every policy varies, most forms of cyber insurance do not cover:

• Acts initiated by or caused by the insured business 
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• Preventable security issues, such as misconfiguring devices, poor security practices, or mishandling data
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• The impacts and losses resulting from wire fraud
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• Third-party losses that could impact your customers and partners

Get the protection your brand deserves.

Those in the cybersecurity world think about protection in what is called “defense in depth.” If a criminal is able to bypass one security control or an employee makes a mistake in one area, another security control is there to prevent or limit future damage.

That’s why, when it comes to protecting your title agency, your organization should not just have the necessary cybersecurity controls in place but also the protection that comes with CertifID. Our platform provides an end-to-end encrypted mechanism to securely collect wire transfer data, protecting your customers and your company from the growing risk of wire fraud. CertifID’s customers are also backed by up to $1 million in wire fraud coverage per transaction, mitigating the limits of cyber insurance policies.

Want to learn more about how to protect your title agency against the cyberthreats of tomorrow and have the right coverage there when you need it? Then take a moment to listen to our latest webinar, “How to Prepare for Your Next Insurance Renewal.”