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from the I-thought-insurance-was-always-a-mess dept.
A recent New York Times article ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/business/cyberattack-insurance-a-challenge-for-business.html ) touted cyberinsurance as the "fastest-growing niche in the insurance industry today." Nicole Perlroth and Elizabeth Harris report: "After the breach at Target, its profit was cut nearly in half - down 46 percent over the same period the year before - in large part because the breach scared away its customers." These enormous costs to brand reputation make it difficult for companies to get as much cyber risk coverage as they want, and the demand is only growing. The Times cites statistics showing a 21 percent increase in demand for cyber-insurance policies from 2012 to 2013, with total premiums reaching $1.3 billion last year and individual companies able to acquire a maximum of roughly $300 million in coverage.
At the time of its breach, Target had only $100 million in coverage, with a $10 million deductible, and had been turned away by at least one insurer when it tried to acquire more cyberinsurance, Perlroth and Harris report. They suggest that this coverage may fall well short of the massive losses incurred by the company when it saw its profits nearly halved.
But their piece comes less than a month after Eric Chemi argued exactly the opposite about the impact of Target's security breach in a piece for Bloomberg Businessweek titled "Investors Couldn't Care Less About Data Breaches." He wrote:
Consider Target and its own well-publicized data breach that happened back in December. Target's stock didn't really move at all. Investors sent a clear message they didn't care. The stock fell several weeks later, in January, only after the company cut its earnings forecast. Even so, the stock rebounded in the next six weeks. Target shares have been falling since last year, for a lot of reasons unrelated to the data breach.
There is a good essay on cyber-insurance here.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday June 19 2014, @05:18PM
Agreed with you until you got to clothes. Or maybe I just have a corollary -- if it's got a designer's name on it, it's gonna be *worse* than the WalMart garbage. Graduated college two years ago and on weekends I'm still wearing the pants I got in *highschool* from JCP. I've got stuff that's ten years old and still looks fine. But all the fancy crap my rich ex got me -- the expensive titanium watch, the "top brand" clothes, the high-end luggage...none of it lasted more than a year. NONE of it. That girl would spend $600 on a freakin *handbag* only to have holes in it three months later!
And actually...my apartment was the cheapest place I could find, and I've got professional landscapers and common areas cleaned weekly, nothing in the apartment has ever broken, parking lots pristine and plentiful, swimming pool and tennis courts and a well maintained gym...though due to work issues I had to find the place and sign my lease from 1000 miles away, so "cheapest I could find" actually means "cheapest advertised on major rental websites" which puts it $100-$200 above the actual cheapest available.
All depends what you want though. My clothes are nothing special, but they last *forever*. Some of the buildings in my apartment complex are over a hundred years old, it's no fancy modern lofts, but it's recently renovated with a great staff and great services. So I say you get what you pay for, but only as long as you first remove the latest popular shiny things from your list of options. If you just buy the most expensive thing possible you're gonna get screwed. Every. Single. Time.