Cyber insurance covers the costs of a data breach, a network attack, and certain funds-transfer fraud, incident response, notification, liability, business interruption, and sometimes ransom and social-engineering loss, none of which a commercial property or general liability policy covers. For owners running connected building systems, online payment portals, and email-driven transactions, it has moved from optional to relevant.
Why property owners now have cyber exposure
Modern commercial real estate runs on systems: networked HVAC, access control, and building automation; online portals for rent, deposits, and applications; and email threads that carry wiring instructions on acquisitions and refinances. Each creates a path for a breach, a ransomware attack that locks building systems, or a fraudulent wire that diverts funds. The exposure grew quietly as operations digitized, while the property policy stayed focused on physical perils.
What cyber covers that property does not
A property policy responds to fire, water, and wind, not to a hacked building-automation system, a breach of tenant data, or a social-engineering wire fraud. Cyber covers the response and liability side of those events: forensic investigation, notification and credit monitoring, regulatory exposure, lost income from a system outage, and, depending on the policy, ransom payments and funds-transfer fraud. It is a distinct category, not an extension of property coverage.
Sizing it to how you operate
The right cyber coverage depends on how digital the operation is: the amount of tenant and financial data held, the reliance on connected building systems, the volume and size of electronic funds transfers, and the in-house versus outsourced IT setup. A small owner with a simple setup needs less than a portfolio operator running smart buildings and a payment portal. We scope it to your actual digital footprint, with attention to the funds-transfer feature that real estate transactions make critical.
