How should a claims team approach business interruption claims following a cyber incident?

• A. Delay all actions until court order.
• B. Assess downtime, dependent-entity outages, data integrity, regulatory fines, and coordinate with cyber and legal teams to determine coverage and timing.
• C. Only assess downtime; ignore data integrity and regulatory fines.
• D. Do not involve cyber or legal teams.

Answer: (B)

A comprehensive, collaborative approach is essential when handling business interruption claims after a cyber incident. The losses aren’t limited to the time systems are down; they extend through how long operations are disrupted, how outages ripple to dependent entities, and how data integrity issues influence your ability to restore normal business. Start by measuring downtime and the actual financial impact it causes, then map out dependent-entity outages—vendors, customers, and other partners whose operations affect yours—to capture cascading losses. Data integrity matters because corrupted or altered data can delay restoration, undermine decision-making, and sometimes trigger additional costs for data recovery or revalidation of records. Regulatory fines or penalties may be a separate layer of exposure, depending on the policy language and the nature of the breach, so they must be considered as part of the potential claim, not as an afterthought.

Crucially, coordinate with the cyber security team to understand the breach’s scope, root causes, containment actions, and forensics findings. This helps establish causation and timelines for loss measurement. Involve legal counsel to interpret policy terms, exclusions, and conditions, and to ensure proper coverage triggers, notice requirements, and documentation. This collaboration ensures the claim is built on accurate facts, aligns with the policy’s intent, and reflects the true timing of losses, which is vital for coverage decisions.

Delaying actions until a court order or focusing only on downtime ignores key factors that drive loss and coverage. Ignoring data integrity or regulatory consequences can lead to gaps in the claim and misinterpretation of coverage. In short, a claim should be built from a clear, documented view of downtime, cascading effects on dependent entities, data integrity issues, regulatory exposure, and coordinated input from cyber and legal teams to determine coverage and timing.