Internet and networked technologies have changed many aspects of how business operates. The ability to readily store and share data across interconnected networks has created new efficiencies in sales and marketing, data access and retrieval, and vendor relations and interaction.

While the benefits of using Internet-based and other technologies are numerous, so are the inherent risks, creating exposures that were virtually unheard of two decades ago.These include:

• theft or manipulation of sensitive or private information, such as financial or health records;

• computer viruses that can destroy data, damage hardware, cripple systems and disrupt a business' operations; and
• computer fraud.

Unfortunately, Internet and network exposures are increasingly subject to exclusion from "traditional" insurance policies since commercial general liability and property policies were originally designed to respond to liabilities and natural perils that damage physical assets. With Internet-based technologies, "i-exposures" are largely intangible, the result of human error, or deliberate malicious attacks and crimes.

To protect against these and similar exposures, Marsh offers risk management and insurance solutions to address these complex risks, including: detailed insurance gap analysis;

• network security survey to assess vulnerability;
• security policy review and development;
• network vulnerability scans; and
• assessment of internet connectivity vulnerability.

Marsh works with leading cyber risk insurers to develop cyber risk insurance protection for Internet and network exposures, including: liability: privacy and confidentiality;

• copyright, trademark, defamation;
• malicious code and viruses;
• business interruption: network outages, computer failure;
• attacks, unauthorized access, theft, Web site defacement and cyber extortion;
• technology errors & omissions; and
• intellectual property infringement.