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Cybercrime

By Scott N. Godes
May 02, 2015

Just when you thought that it could not get worse for companies in the context of cybersecurity and privacy issues ' it does. Perhaps most significant, a court recently allowed banks to proceed against a retailer to pursue damages allegedly flowing from a cyberattack and data privacy incident involving payment card numbers. That same retailer disclosed hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as a result of the cyberattack and data privacy incident. Another retailer fell victim to a cyberattack and data privacy incident involving payment card numbers. Major entertainment businesses suffered cyberattacks, with one reportedly involving information about celebrities, corporate IP, and user names and passwords for social media accounts of the company. Distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) are also on the rise. Below, we review the sobering news about cyberattacks and provide some tips when considering insurance for cyber risk.

How Bad Is It?

First, the decision involving banks and retailers is significant. In In re Target Corp. Customer Data Breach Security Litigation, MDL No. 14-2522, slip op. [Dkt. 261] (D. Minn. Dec. 2, 2014), the court refused to dismiss a complaint in the “Financial Institution Cases.” The refusal to dismiss a putative class action complaint against a corporate defendant in connection with a data privacy incident is not the eye-opening part. Rather, it's the identity of the plaintiffs. “Plaintiffs here are a putative class of issuer banks whose customers' data was stolen in the Target data breach.” Id. at 2. Those banks have sued Target Corporation, alleging that Target was negligent in failing to secure payment card numbers, that Target violated Minnesota's Plastic Security Card Act, that there was negligence per se (because of the alleged statutory violation), and that the failure to tell the banks of Target's allegedly insufficient security practices was a negligent misrepresentation by omission. Id.

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