When Illinois enacted the Biometric Information Privacy Act in 2008 (BIPA), the concept of “biometric privacy protection” was foreign to many observers. Yet less than 20 years later, consumers are familiar with the concept of biometric privacy and class action plaintiffs’ lawyers have spotted an opportunity. As many other states…
Amidst the recent surge in ransomware attacks on U.S. businesses—with crypto criminals and sometimes State actors invading and encrypting computer and operating systems and extorting funds in exchange for the decryption key—one new ploy deserves attention from our perspective as insurance coverage lawyers. A new scheme involves demanding that the…
Over the past few years, ransomware attacks have increased in frequency and demand size. And, increasingly, those attacks have targeted businesses and critical infrastructure organizations from across the globe. This trend is likely to continue. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency noted that cybersecurity authorities in the United States, Australia…
As cybercrimes and data breaches continue to cause significant damage to companies of all types, policyholders are looking to their various insurance policies for coverage to help weather the storm and recoup losses. A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit highlights the need for…
Winning a championship ring is everything. Just ask the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won 11 National League West titles between their 1988 and 2020 World Series Championships and would likely have traded several of those division titles for more World Series championships. But, of course, not all rings are equal.…
The Biden administration has hit the ground running with executive orders, regulatory and legislative priorities, and cabinet-level and other top posts being announced on a daily basis. Our public policy colleagues have been closely tracking many of the policy priorities of the new administration and highlighting important regulatory and legislative…
A few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the insurance focus (understandably) has been on business interruption and event cancellation coverage. Various other coverages are in play as well, given the types of COVID-19-related claims and lawsuits being filed (and that will be filed in the future) against corporate policyholders, from…
Have $57 million (or more) to spare? You’re going to need it if you run afoul of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) without cyber insurance. In late January 2019, the French data protection authority, CNIL, imposed a fine of €50 million—or roughly $57 million—on Google for violations of…
On insurance coverage issues, sometimes the boat seems to be listing in the wrong direction. For example, insurers have long tilted the decks to avoid coverage for “spoofing” attacks and similar kinds of email fraud by throwing their weight behind arguments that such transactions do not involve a “direct loss”…
One thing is for certain: cyberattacks have become the norm, not the exception. Not even the NSA is capable of completely warding off security breaches. Major banking and retail institutions, as well as the government, are not surprisingly the most likely targets because of the amount of sensitive and private…