Insurance Plans for Cloud Computing Becoming a Reality
Zurich has released cloud computing insurance plans that help protect businesses against financial loss due to cloud mishaps. It sounds trivial but most people wouldn’t dare think about driving their automobile or buying a house without some sort of insurance policy. When you put your business in the cloud, you could be working at the mercy of another provider and if that provider goes down, a service level agreement may reimburse you for money that you would have spent with your cloud provider. Service level agreements come up short in many regards. For example, most SLA’s do not reimburse you for the money your customers would have spent with you during the unscheduled downtime. Cloud insurance policies have sprung up to help protect businesses with critical applications against financial ruin due to third party or “Act of God” type of scenarios.
Jim Charron, technology leader at Zurich North America was quoted in a press release as saying, “It’s important to not only have insurance protection against cyber-attacks like hacking and data breaches, but also be safeguarded against income loss from a business interruption caused by property damage at the cloud facility.” The press release goes on to talk about Hurricane Sandy and how the storm shutdown datacenters in the Northeast USA thus making some corporation’s services unavailable. Zurich mentioned that these types of scenarios would be fully covered.
Other insurance agencies have created insurance products directly aimed at cloud entrepreneurs. CloudInsure.com was started for this very purpose. CloudInsure’s website goes on to mention that its coverage is “Tailored to the Cloud environment, not an off the shelf cyber-risk solution.” According to CloudInsure’s ‘Our Process’ page, it seems as if the niche cloud insurance provider uses a matrix to assign risk and quantify costs.
While investing in a trusted security solution for your cloud business should be the first line of insurance for your cloud business, it may not hurt to look into getting a quote for an actual cloud insurance policy from Zurich, CloudInsure or one of the other vendors in this emerging market.
