New York State officials announced that the State of New York will receive just over $19 million from Equifax’s settlement after its 2017 data breach exposed the data of nearly 150 million people. Nearly 8.5 million New York residents who had their data exposed by the breach will be eligible for relief as part of the settlement.
Equifax will have to pay at least $650 million overall as part of the settlement, a figure that includes fines to states, $300 million in free credit monitoring services, and penalties to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.
New York will get about $9 million as part of the multi-state settlement, while the New York Department of Financial Services’ separate investigation brought a further $10 million fine from the settlement, bringing the state’s ultimate total to $19.2 million.
The settlement further requires Equifax to make it easier for people to freeze and thaw their credit while also being able to dispute inaccurate information in credit reports.
Equifax’s breach is one of the biggest in history, but small businesses are becoming more popular data breach and cyber attack targets as larger companies beef up cyber security measures. That makes it imperative for small businesses to obtain cyber liability insurance in order to defend against, manage, and contain data breaches in order to avoid being run out of business by the costs of a data breach.
Where can you obtain instant cyber liability insurance to guard against data breaches?
Colonial Surety includes cyber liability insurance with our ERISA fidelity bond packages with fiduciary liability insurance to best protect your company plan against a cyber attack.
Colonial’s cyber insurance provides a services-based solution to help plan sponsors manage data breaches successfully. These services include a dedicated team of cyber breach professionals who assist plan sponsors at every stage of incident investigation and breach response. These professionals coordinate the carefully vetted forensics experts and specialized lawyers to help plan sponsors establish what’s been compromised; assess plan sponsor responsibility; and, notify those individuals affected. In addition, these services will also coordinate credit or identity monitoring, and PR advice to help the plan sponsor safeguard its reputation. Of course, Colonial’s cyber insurance also indemnifies and defends plan sponsors from covered lawsuits or regulatory actions, the risk of which may be reduced by a well-coordinated breach response, but can never be completely eliminated.
Ongoing governance and evaluation of recordkeepers can help protect data, but the only way to fully protect against a potential cyber attack’s data breach is to purchase cyber liability insurance from Colonial Surety Company.