Does Cyber Insurance Cover Downtime?

A business may experience downtime after a ransomware attack, network compromise, or covered system failure. Cyber business-interruption coverage can address certain resulting lost income and continuing expenses; the Insurance Information Institute describes these as possible first-party benefits. A brief outage, scheduled maintenance, or interruption from an excluded cause may not qualify. Policies also may require the affected system to be named or defined as an insured computer system.

Check the covered-event trigger, waiting-hours period, minimum duration, and how the restoration period ends. Review whether extra expenses to keep operating are included and whether the waiting period applies separately to each event. Keep system logs, outage timelines, revenue records, and evidence of mitigation. If a vendor outage caused the downtime, look for contingent coverage rather than assuming the first-party interruption grant applies.