Cyber vs Tech E&O on an outage
· Shield & Stallion Insurance LLC
The product goes down. A customer wants the lost revenue paid. Someone on the team says “we have cyber.” Someone else says the MSA asked for professional liability. Both can be looking at the same binder and still be describing two different claims. Cyber is often used for data incidents, ransomware, privacy claims, and related response costs, subject to the form. A claim that the software or tech service failed to perform is more often Technology E&O.
Three events that get collapsed into one sentence
A malicious event such as ransomware, a stolen laptop with customer data, or a vendor-impersonation wire is the usual cyber conversation. Even there, social engineering and funds-transfer fraud are frequently more limited than the rest of the form. Underwriters will ask about backups, MFA, and where the data lives. The policy, including sublimits, still controls.
A performance claim is the other side. The integration never went live. The SLA was missed. A bug corrupted a customer’s records. The buyer says they lost money because the product did not do what was promised. That is the core Tech E&O claim. It is not a warranty that the software works. It is not a substitute for a limitation of liability in the contract. Availability and wording vary by market.
Then the outage that is nobody’s hack: a cloud region fails, a bad deploy takes the app down, a dependency dies. Non-malicious outages may fall outside standard cyber coverage, although some forms provide system-failure coverage. Customer claims from that outage are still more often an E&O question, or they may sit on neither form. How the event is described in a notice of claim matters. This page cannot classify your outage in advance.
Packaged is not the same coverage
Many carriers bind Tech E&O and cyber together. That is convenient. It is not one coverage part. Buying only cyber, then finding a non-malicious outage the cyber form does not treat as a covered event, is a common miss. Using a general professional-liability form written for accountants or architects, then finding it excludes technology services, is another. We will show you both sides in plain language after a market has actually quoted, not as a finding on a website.
Enterprise schedules often name both products, plus additional insured and waiver language that has to live on the policy. A certificate of insurance is evidence of insurance. It does not amend the policy, and it does not move an outage from one insuring agreement to another. Email the exhibit after you submit. This site does not accept uploads.
What we do with the file
The application opens an agency file, not an application to a carrier. A licensed advisor maps the contract and the controls, then takes the submission to markets that write technology companies. We aim to respond within one business day. We do not bind online. We transact only where Shield & Stallion Insurance LLC, or a licensed producer working the file, is authorized. If Illinois is headquarters, there is a separate cyber insurance Illinois page. Placement still depends on where we are authorized to transact.
This note is educational. It is not a quote, a recommendation, legal advice, or a finding that you have or lack coverage. The policy form, including exclusions and how the event is described, controls. See the insurance disclosure.
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