Whether you’re working from home or trying to stay in touch with loved ones, video conferencing apps like Zoom are becoming the new normal. Cybercriminals have exploited this type of application before, but their latest scam may be the trickiest yet.

Just as you should take precautions to make sure returning workers aren't sick, you will want to make sure returning computers are not sick as well. It is imperative that incoming computers are checked for infections and safety measures are performed before you allow them back onto the corporate network.

Today, data breaches are more common than ever. A data breach is a leak of sensitive or confidential information, whether intentional or unintentional. It is almost a guarantee that at least one of your passwords, past or present, has been exposed by a data breach.

The beginning of Daylight Saving Time is filled with both trials and great opportunities. For optimists, it’s the unofficial start of Spring with longer days, warmer weather, and long-awaited time spent on the golf course. Yet increased health risks, psychological affects, and the (even greater) sleep deprivation from which we already suffer leaves many of us dreading the annual clock change.

In Part I of this two-part series “Cyber Insurance – Have You Read the Fine Print?” we wrote of the importance of carefully reviewing clauses when it comes to your Cyber Insurance policy. If you haven’t read the article, take a look here for some great insight into some seldom-known facts.

A client recently reached out to me about their Cyber Insurance coverage asking if the coverage limits looked reasonable. Since Cyber Insurance is a new insurance product, it’s no wonder that there is a lot of mystery around these policies. Let’s take a look at some insights that can help you ask the right questions and make the correct choices for your business when it comes to Cyber Insurance.

Ransomware attacks and data breaches are all over the news; naturally businesses are interested in acquiring coverage to help protect themselves financially from these threats. When evaluating Cyber Insurance, most businesses focus on coverage limits. However, the biggest concern is reviewing the actual policy clauses rather than just the coverage limits. You can have a $5 million policy, but if the claims are denied due to unnoticed clauses in the policy, then the coverage limit doesn’t really matter. The devil is in the details.

Key Items to Look for in a Cyber Insurance Policy:

• Cyber Extortion/Ransomware
  Does the policy only cover the ransom payment, or do you have an option to resolve the incident without paying the ransom and have those costs covered?
  
  
• Data Loss & Recovery
  Are lost productivity/business losses covered in the event of malware erasing your files? Are data recovery costs included in the coverage?
  
  
• Civil Suit Coverage
  Is reimbursement for defending against civil suits brought by victims of fraud or identity theft resulting from a breach of your business’s data covered?
  
  
• Fines & Breach Notification
  Are regulatory fines (HIPAA, NYS DFS, etc.) and/or the costs associated with disclosing, notifying, and providing credit monitoring for victims whose data was lost in a breach of your business data covered?
  
  
• Cyber Terrorism/Act of War Coverage
  If a cyberattack is deemed to be the result of a foreign government or terrorist group’s action, will it still be covered? What is the threshold for this determination?
  
  
• Actual Financial Loss & Remediation and Investigation (value of cash/goods lost due to fraud & IT and legal professional costs)
  Are both of these items included in coverage, is it an either/or, or is only one side of this covered?

• Exclusions
  Some policies exclude anything that originated from Social Engineering or that might be covered under your general Business Insurance policy. What specifically is not covered under the policy?

Not all policies offer the same coverage and it’s important that you carefully review this new product with your insurance agent to make sure you’re financially protected in the manner you’re expecting. Your Cyber Extortion policy may only cover paying the ransom (which may or may not actually result in restoration of your files) and may not cover the cost for IT professionals (like LMT) to restore data from backups. If that’s the case, you’re gambling that the criminals victimizing you have purchased or written ransomware that can actually restore all your files. There are a large number of reasons the criminals behind the ransomware may not be able to restore the files – see our previous post “Should I Pay the Ransom?” for more details on these.

GreenFlash Sundown exploit kit has been repurposed to drop a botnet, cryptominer, and very potent ransomware (all three at once) via drive-by downloads served via website ads. This kit hadn’t been targeted at North America previously but this recent repurposing has been designed to primarily attack English language users in North America.

The biggest mitigations are fully patched Flash & web browsers, safe and careful browsing habits, and being trained in security awareness to learn to avoid clicking links in emails that may be trying to direct you to a site serving the malvertisement.

Also, interesting note – the exploit kit executes a system check to make sure the environment is “desirable” before it fires the main payload, so the same malicious ad may trigger ransomware on one system but not another.

References:

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-analysis/2019/06/greenflash-sundown-exploit-kit-expands-via-large-malvertising-campaign/