Electronic equipment insurance

Electronic equipment insurance was born when computer centers accounted for a significant share of a company's assets and standard property policies covered them poorly. It covers accidental physical damage to servers, workstations, network equipment and electronic devices: dropping, spilled liquid, power surge, electrical damage, fire, theft. It usually carries two extensions: the cost of restoring media and data lost as a result of physical damage, and extra operating expense, renting replacement equipment, using a backup site, to keep the business running. Its boundary with cyber insurance is the practical question. The electronic equipment policy requires physical damage at the origin: it does not respond to ransomware that encrypts data on intact hardware. The cyber policy covers precisely that event without physical damage, but may exclude hardware replacement. A server rendered unusable by an attack that corrupts its firmware sits exactly between the two, hence the value of an explicit cover in one policy or the other. The product has lost weight with cloud computing: when the hardware belongs to the provider, the insured has little left to insure for damage.