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Category: Cyber Protection

Do You Know These 4 Often Overlooked Coverages for Property Managers?

Posted on by Jon Blankenship

When it comes to insurance, property managers and residential building owners often focus on general liability and property coverage. While these are crucial, there are additional risk exposures that need to be addressed. Here are four important types of coverage you might be overlooking:

  1. Errors & Omissions (E&O) Coverage

    What is it?

    Errors & Omissions insurance may help protect you against claims of negligence or inadequate work. If a tenant sues you for failing to perform your duties or for providing incorrect advice, E&O coverage might help with costly legal fees and settlements.Why you need it:
    Property management is a complex field where mistakes can happen despite best efforts. Whether it’s a clerical error that leads to financial loss or a misstep in tenant placement, E&O insurance provides vital protection.

  2. Tenant Discrimination Coverage

    What is it?

    This coverage offers protection if a tenant (or prospective tenant) alleges discrimination based on race, religion, gender, etc., during the rental process or tenancy.

    Why you need it:

    Even with the best intentions, discrimination claims can arise and lead to expensive lawsuits. Tenant discrimination coverage can help manage the financial burden of legal defense costs and settlements.

  3. Workers’ Compensation Coverage

    What is it?

    Workers’ compensation insurance can help cover medical expenses and lost wages for employees who get injured while working on your property.

    Why you need it:

    If you employ staff such as maintenance workers, cleaners, or security personnel, workers’ compensation is often legally required. But even office staff may have risk exposures such as moving large packages or injuries during on-site work. It can also protect you in lawsuits brought by employees for workplace injuries.

  4. Cyber Liability Coverage

    What is it?

    Cyber liability insurance protects against data breaches and cyber attacks, covering costs like legal fees, notification expenses, and compensation to affected parties.

    Why you need it:

    Property managers handle sensitive data, from tenant applications to payment information. A breach can not only damage your reputation but also lead to significant financial consequences. Cyber liability coverage helps mitigate these risks.Have you considered these overlooked coverages? We’re here to help you better protect your business and assets. For more detailed advice tailored to your needs, contact Brandon Patterson on our team at brandon@ownbyinsurance.com

What Do Charities and Nonprofits Need to Know About Their Insurance?

Posted on by Ownby Insurance Service

We are lucky to have many charities and nonprofit organizations that serve a vital role in our communities. The services and resources they provide can be a lifeline of support for thousands of people. But even organizations with the best intentions, missions, and goals have risks to consider.

As you’d imagine, liability, workers’ comp, property, and commercial auto policies are often needed for most of these organizations. But what about other risks? Here are a few that nonprofits and charities should take into consideration:

Directors & Officers

Your organization likely has a group of volunteer leaders that help support the decisions and guide you in fulfilling your mission. However, they may be held responsible for some of those decisions if they have negative results. Directors & Officers (D&O) coverage may help with defense costs, settlements and judgments associated with claims against nonprofit organizations. It may also help protect their personal assets should legal matters implicate them.

Cyber Liability

Many organizations maintain sensitive data about those they serve. This may include medical information, personal details, addresses, and more. Having cybersecurity measures in place to protect this data is critical. But just as critical is having the right cyber liability policy in place. A data breach can cost thousands of dollars, even for a small organization. To help you respond and recover, consider a standalone cyber policy that provides the right coverage for your specific risks.

Vulnerable Groups Served

If your nonprofit or charity assists with support for children, the elderly, or mentally challenged individuals, it is an unfortunate reality that there is some risk for abuse. There are professional liability coverages that may help protect your organization if allegations of abuse occur.

Some may be specific to the type of charity work you perform, and it is best to consult with your agent on what is best suited for your risks. This may assist employees in the case of false allegations as well, even potentially providing defense funds and lost wages.

Additional Coverage Considerations

In some cases, insurers may offer specific coverages or umbrella policies that are more custom to the risks a charity or nonprofit is facing. Such coverages may help better protect your organization, your leadership, and the communities you serve.

Having an insurance agent who understands the risks of your charity or nonprofit is extremely important. The services you provide are often critical for the people who receive them. Not having the right insurance may leave the work you with vulnerabilities you never considered.

Brandon Patterson from our team would be more than happy to discuss these items with your organization and help you identify risks and coverages. Please contact him for more info at brandon@ownbyinsurance.com.

Claims for Theft and Burglary: What’s Covered and When?

Posted on by Ownby Insurance Service

If you own a business, having something stolen from your company may be an unfortunate reality someday. But is there a difference in how it is covered based on how it is stolen? There may indeed be differences depending on your policy. Let’s review what you may find as you understand these coverages.

Insurance for theft typically covers any stolen property, regardless of where it was stolen. Insurance for a burglary may only cover property that was stolen when a forced entry into a building or structure was involved. If you have commercial property insurance, you may think theft is covered. But that isn’t always the case, especially for crime-related losses.

However, if you have a commercial crime policy, there is a good chance you are protected from losses occurring from business-related crimes, including:

Employee Theft Insurance

Protects you against dishonest acts committed by your employees, including theft of money or property.

Robbery and Premises Theft Insurance

Protects your property inside your premises while you’re open for business. You’re even covered if you or your employees are ever robbed while doing business offsite.

Computer Fraud Insurance

May help cover losses when employees or hackers commit fraud or theft via computers. As an important note, crime insurance will typically not cover losses as a result of data breaches. This type of loss would need to be covered by cyber liability coverage.

Forgery Insurance

Helps protect you if documents are forged or altered in schemes that typically involve the false acquisition of your funds.

Theft of Money or Securities

Protection for physical theft of money or securities and may help protect you even if this theft occurs off premises of your business.

As you can see, there is more than one may realize when it comes to protecting your business from theft, burglary, or crime. Contact Brandon Patterson on our team at brandon@ownbyinsurance.com or call 865.453.1414 and he’ll help you understand these risks and your options.

Steps for Better Personal Risk Management

Posted on by Ownby Insurance Service

You could probably guess that companies need to take steps to reduce their risks, including safety programs, cybersecurity, and more. But should you be taking risk management steps for yourself? Do you have ways you can lower your own risks and potentially reduce the chances you have a loss or an insurance claim? The answer to both these questions is “yes” of course!

Driving Risks

Over 36,000 automobile accidents occur every day1 in the U.S. Many of these accidents are caused by distracted driving. One of the simplest steps you can take for better personal risk management is to avoid using your devices while driving. And while texting may be the most obvious, many people are using their phones for searches, looking up directions, or even watching videos! Avoid these while you aren’t parked in your vehicle whenever possible.

In addition, keeping your car in good working order is also a way to reduce your risk. Keep your tires properly inflated, have brakes and safety mechanisms checked, change windshield wiper blades as needed, and keep up regular maintenance to prevent mechanical issues that could cause an accident.

Cyber Risks

The average American accesses the internet for around seven hours of their day!2 Much of that may be for work, but many Americans also work from home. If you’re using your personal devices, take steps to protect your data:

  1. Protect your passwords and create stronger passwords whenever possible.
  2. Use multifactor authentication when it is an option for logins.
  3. Avoid using “open” or unsecured internet network connections.
  4. Be careful visiting websites and especially entering data on sites that do not have SSL encryption (https://).

Liability Risks

Lawsuits are on the rise in our country, and larger verdicts and judgments are more common. You can protect your own liability at home by taking steps that include:

  1. Fence in your yard, especially if you have a trampoline, pool, treehouse, etc.
  2. Avoid “overserving” alcohol to adults at your home – even friends and neighbors.
  3. Monitor and control your dog and/or other pets, even if they haven’t been known to bite.
  4. Talk with your family about being careful in their interactions with others, and the importance of safety.

These are just a few of the examples of ways you can be safer and also lower your risks. But accidents can still happen, and you need to have the right coverages in place in case they do. Contact Brandon Patterson from our team to better understand what those coverage options may be for you – brandon@ownbyinsurance.com or 865.453.1414.

1-per Progressive Insurance data

2-per Forbes data

Risk Management and Your Team’s Role in Lowering Risk

Posted on by Ownby Insurance Service

Risk Management and Your Team’s Role in Lowering Risk

Workers’ compensation rates have been steadily dropping for the last decade in Tennessee and other states. And while factors like market competition and legal system improvements are factors, one of the biggest impacts has come from a reduction in claims frequency and claims severity. How has this been achieved? Safety and risk management programs. When better procedures are in place to protect employees, fewer accidents – or less damaging accidents – occur. So, could this be applied elsewhere to lower your businesses risks?

Preparing Your Team for Success

Onboarding, training, screening, and testing of employees and potential hires can help you lower risk. And this isn’t just for jobs with physical risks. Training your employees on cyber risks, onboarding them for customer interaction, screening them for past loss history, and intermittently testing them on what they’ve learned can all help with your risk management. Let’s review some examples of how this approach can be impactful.

Cyber Liability Prevention

Most businesses store customer data or personal info in some fashion. Whether it be loyalty info like names and birthdays or financial info like credit cards stored for recurring payments, this data is sensitive and must be protected. If you train and test your employees on avoiding cyber risks like phishing, hacking, and human error, you’ll be helping lower your cyber risk.

Third Party Liability Prevention

How does your team interact with customers? If there is a physical location that customers visit for goods, services, or transactions, is it well-maintained? Does your team know to clean up spills, report malfunctioning equipment, or notify management of unsafe conditions? Quickly acting on these concerns not only makes for a better customer experience, it may also reduce your risk.

Property Damage Prevention

If you work on or interact with customer property, having your employees properly trained is critical. Whether it be a $20,000 car or a $1,000,000 piece of equipment, the work your employees do shouldn’t put position you for a claim. And while accidents happen, the better the training, the less likely they are to occur.

Good risk management leads to better options for your insurance, especially as your business’s loss history continues to be good or improves from prior claims. Contact Brandon Patterson at 865.453.1414 or email brandon@ownbyinsurance.com to discuss how it could help your business.

Cyber Risks: Managing Versus Insuring

Posted on by Ownby Insurance Service

The recent CrowdStrike outage that impacted Microsoft Windows users cost a reported $5 billion to Fortune 500 companies. But even if you aren’t a large company, you’re probably aware that cyber risks continue to increase for businesses, whether it be data breach, hacking, phishing, or otherwise compromising systems.

Cyber Protection
Whether it is the Windows Defender program that may have come with your computers, or an extensive plan with monitoring, having a plan for defending your data is critical. Business.com1 suggests these steps that every organization should take:

  1. Teach your staff about cybersecurity.
  2. Set internal controls to guard against employee fraud.
  3. Keep your software updated.
  4. Use difficult-to-guess passwords.
  5. Guard your wireless networks.
  6. Use encryption on all types of data.
  7. Back up your data every day.
  8. Switch to the cloud.

And we’ll add one more – use multifactor authentication (MFA) for logins. In fact, MFA combined with teaching your staff and keeping software updated may be the three most important steps to get started.

Cyber Liability Insurance
Even with a great plan in place, cyber incidents can occur. If you do have a breach or other cyber breach, having the right insurance can help you recover. Depending on the policy, there may be coverage to help you:

  1. Notify affected customers.
  2. Restore systems.
  3. Assist with legal liability.
  4. Third party liability for business partners impacted by the breach.
  5. Ransomware demands to restore our data.

Some other business policies may offer our include coverage for cyber liability. However, it is often not enough to protect you form the scale of incidents that typically occurs. A “standalone” policy that suits your business’s specific needs may be a better fit for your coverage.

Contact Brandon Patterson from our team at 865.453.1414 or brandon@ownbyinsurance.com for more information on cyber liability coverage options for your business.

1 – Per https://www.business.com/articles/7-security-practices-for-your-business-data/