At a hosting company your own loss is rarely the problem: the bill arises on the side of the customers who all go down at the same time and all come knocking at the same time.
The calculator and the quote form below are in Dutch. Prefer to do this in English? Email info@finassverzekert. nl or call 072 - 509 24 56 and we will take it from there.
Work out for yourself what it would cost.
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We compare the offerings of several insurers
An adviser checks whether the cover suits your activities
A premium indication, not personal advice. Prefer to talk it through? Call 072 - 509 24 56.
In brief
For almost all your customers you are the processor and not the controller. You do not decide what data sits in their applications, but you do carry the security of the environment in which that data lives. After an incident you report to your customers, each within the period set in his data processing agreement, and they report to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (the Dutch data protection authority). That means you have to be able to say within a day, per customer, what has been affected, and that is a forensic task you have to organise in advance.
The characteristic risk is accumulation. One compromised management environment, one infected hypervisor or one error in a rollout hits not one customer but every customer in the same space. The sum insured therefore has to match not an average claim but a scenario in which a large part of your portfolio reports a loss at the same time. Look at the limit per event and at the maximum per insurance year. For this type of business those two quickly diverge.
Limit your exposure contractually as well. In your general terms and SLAs you set out what you stand behind, up to what amount and with what exclusions. Those arrangements help determine what an insurer is prepared to cover. Set against that the fact that contractual penalties and service credits you have agreed yourself are not an insured loss. If you supply development or management alongside hosting, that calls for professional indemnity cover for errors in that work.
What does cyber insurance for hosting companies cover?
The structure of the cover in three parts, with an overview per situation below.
Immediate help
Incident response
Specialists who look into it within hours.
24/7 reporting line
Forensic investigation
Recovery and restart
Your business
Own damage
What the incident costs you yourself.
Data recovery and reconstruction
Business downtime
Ransom under consideration
Towards third parties
Liability
Claims from customers and data subjects.
Claims after a data breach
GDPR notification costs
Legal assistance
What is covered
Situation
Cyber
AVB
BAV
Ransomware brings your systems down
Yes
No
No
Data breach involving personal data
Yes
No
Sometimes
Costs of notification and informing those affected
Yes
No
No
Fraud through a falsified payment instruction
Sometimes
No
No
Administrative fine from the regulator
No
No
No
Hardware that is physically damaged
No
No
No
This overview is general in nature and is not personal advice. What is actually covered, including exclusions, limits and the excess, is set out in the policy conditions and the insurance card (verzekeringskaart) of the insurer; you receive both before you take out cover. Taking out cover without advice? Then read what execution only means for you.
Where things go wrong in practice
Four points that make the difference between a policy that pays out and one that does not.
Downtime without an attack is a separate cover
A large share of the outages in this sector is caused not by attackers but by a migration that goes wrong, a configuration error or failed storage. Standard cyber policies cover only malicious causes. Ask about the extension for unintentional system failure, because without it your most likely loss falls outside the cover while you pay for the less likely one.
Accumulation determines your sum insured
Work out what happens if fifty or a hundred customers go down at once and then claim. The sum of their lost turnover is many times your own annual turnover, while the premium is based on that own turnover. So look closely at the limit per event, the annual maximum and the question of whether all claims from one cause are counted as one event.
Back-ups of customer data are your biggest exposure
Many customers assume that you will restore their data, even where that was not bought as a service. Record for each customer who makes the back-up, how often, how long it is kept and who carries out the restore. If it turns out after an incident that the back-up was encrypted along with everything else or was never tested, the discussion shifts from technology to liability and your own shortcoming becomes the subject.
What falls outside the cover
Not covered are contractual penalties and service credits under your SLAs, subscription fees refunded, and rebuilding or improving your platform afterwards. Damage caused by acts of war or state actors, physical damage to hardware in the data centre and intent or wilful recklessness under Article 7:952 of the Dutch Civil Code are also excluded. Known, unpatched vulnerabilities regularly lead to a refusal.
What does your premium depend on?
Number of customers and size per customer. Determines the accumulation risk: how many parties can claim at once from a single cause.
Type of service. Shared hosting, virtual servers, colocation and managed services each have their own risk profile.
Data in the hosted environments. If healthcare, financial or government applications run there, a breach in the chain weighs more heavily.
Limitation of liability in your terms. How tightly your SLAs and general terms are drafted counts towards acceptance.
Cover for unintentional downtime. Including non-malicious failures raises the premium but covers your most realistic scenario.
Management of administrator accounts. Multi-factor authentication and separated management environments are firm conditions of acceptance here.
Insurers weigh these details differently. That is where your saving is.
How we arrange it
You request a quoteWe take stock of your activities, turnover and wishes.
We compareseveral insurers, on premium as well as conditions.
You receive a proposalWith an explanation of the differences and the exclusions.
We arrange the switchIncluding cancellation, so there is no gap in cover.
Customers rate our service on four aspects: personal service, service delivery, availability and the outcome. The reviews are collected and published by NH1816 and come from customers who have actually taken out a policy with Finass Advies B.V. or reported a claim.
No. Penalties and credits you have agreed contractually are your own choice and do not count as an insured loss. What can fall under the third-party section is the loss a customer suffers and for which you are liable in law. The distinction between the two stands or falls with the wording in your contracts.
A migration went wrong and customers were down for two days. Is that covered?
Only if the extension for unintentional system failure is included. The basic cover of a cyber policy requires a malicious cause, such as an attack or infection. An error of your own in the rollout falls outside it. For a hosting company this is often the most important extension in the whole policy.
Who reports the data breach to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens?
Your customer, because he is the controller. You report the incident to him within the period set in the data processing agreement, often shorter than 72 hours. That means you have to be able to say quickly, per customer, which systems and which data have been affected. Logging and separated environments are the condition for that.
We only host; the applications belong to others. Does that limit our risk?
It limits your role, not your exposure. If your platform is down, all customers suffer loss regardless of who built the application. It is important, though, to set out in the contract where your responsibility ends and the application supplier's begins; that boundary determines who is held responsible when a claim comes in.
Finass Verzekert is a trading name of Finass Advies B.V. We advise on and arrange non-life insurance on the basis of an objective analysis of several insurers, and receive commission for this from the insurer, which is included in the premium. You pay no separate advice fee. Before you take out cover, we establish your wishes and needs.
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