Is IT worth having cyber insurance?

Is it worth having cyber insurance in Australia, yes it is worth it for almost any business that uses email, stores customer data, takes online payments or relies on computers, because cybercrime is extremely common and recovery costs are high. The Australian Cyber Security Centre reports a cybercrime every 7 minutes, with small business average loss $46,000 and medium business $97,000, while average data breach cost in Australia is $4.5M according to IBM. Cyber insurance with $500K to $1M cover costs $300 to $1,500 per year for small business, which is far less than potential loss. It is worth it because it covers business interruption if ransomware shuts you down for days or weeks, data recovery costs to restore systems, forensic investigation to find how breach happened, legal costs, notification costs to customers under Notifiable Data Breaches scheme which requires notifying within 72 hours and can cost $50K to $200K in mail and credit monitoring, cyber extortion for ransom negotiation, and third party liability if customers sue you. Without insurance, many small businesses close after major cyber attack, with 60% of small businesses closing within 6 months of significant breach. It is especially worth it if you hold personal information like health, finance or identity documents, are in high-risk industries like professional services, health, finance, or have limited IT resources. Even with strong controls like MFA and backups, human error causes 90% of incidents, so insurance is safety net. Government recommends all businesses have it.