General Liability insurance covers various parties, and this includes named insureds and additional insureds. As risk managers, many people ask us about the difference between additional insureds and named insureds and how it affects them, which we highlight in this blog.

What is a Named Insured?

In a liability insurance policy, the named insured is the policyholder covered under the policy. The policyholder is covered for their legal liability that results in damages as a result of an occurrence. Many liability policies issued to a businesses will cover one named insured, usually, the corporation itself, but there is an opportunity to cover other related entities the insured would like and extend the coverage.

Email has been a part of our everyday life for quite some time now. These days with some restrictions imposed on face-to-face interaction, email has become an effective way to communicate. As a result of this the number of emails sent and received daily has been steadily increasing each year. According to Campaign Monitor an average person sends and receives 121 business emails per day. While, this is an effective way to communicate, handling such an amount of emails can become a challenge if one does not have a strategy of how to manage them. Managing incoming emails and ensuring that emails you send are effective is important in this digital age.

The ALS team congratulates Southern Marinas Holdings II, LLC on, yet, another successful acquisition – Millstone Resort and Marina located on Lake of the Ozarks in Gravois Mills, Missouri.  

We are proud to have been a part of the Southern Marinas acquisition team and look forward to partnering with this wonderful organization as they continue to expand their portfolio of best-in-class waterfront recreational destinations.

Congratulations to Southern Marinas Holdings II, LLC on completing their fourth acquisition in 2021 - the purchase of Hayden Lake Marina, located on picturesque Hayden Lake in the Coeur d’Alene region of Idaho.. The ALS Team is proud to be part of Southern Marina’s acquisition team and appreciates the opportunity to partner with this growing organization and its leadership team to support their risk management due diligence efforts.  Click on the image below to read the full press release.  

Ransomware continues to be a major issue for companies regardless of the size. It may be hard to believe, but the reason for this lies with the victims, because the quickest and most often used resolution to the attack is to pay the ransom. While paying the ransom, may resolve a problem for an organization, it encourages cyber criminals to continue the attacks.

As, risk managers, we often get asked by clients, “what is the appropriate period to retain insurance policies” - the easy answer is “forever”... You are probably thinking that guidance seems a bit excessive, however quite a few types of policies, such as commercial general liability, may be triggered long after the policy has expired and thus should not be discarded but rather meticulously tracked.

Congratulations to Southern Marinas Holdings II, LLC on the purchase of Elliott Bay Marina, one of the largest private marinas on the West Coast. The ALS Team is proud to be part of Southern Marina’s acquisition team and appreciates the opportunity to partner with such a wonderful organization and its leadership team to support their risk management due diligence efforts.  Click on the image below to read Southern Marinas full press release.  

As organizations are becoming more aware of Cyber-attacks and Ransomware and are improving IT security tools they use; Ransomware and Cyber criminals are also evolving and are devising new ways to breach a company's systems.  In addition, expenses related to Cyber breaches/attacks are steadily increasing.  Ponemon's 2019 Cost of a Data Breach study noted that "breaches originating from a malicious Cyber-attack were not only the most common, but also the most expensive."

Below are several tips to help combat Ransomware and other Cyber threats:

1. Strong passwords aren't enough - companies should be implementing and enforcing two factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access using a company account, especially for users with elevated access rights. 
2. "Over the counter" anti-virus is a bit outdated - look into rolling out Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software.  It's smarter and responds fast to threats than your average anti-virus software. 
3. Implement Email Spam Filtering - a quality spam Filtering service will not catch all spam and phishing attempts but it will prevent most of them from reaching a user's inbox; therefore reducing the threat that a user errantly clicks on a malicious link For the ones that do get through, educate your staff on how to identify and deal with phishing attempts. 
4. Introduce multiple point of redundancy - in some cases your backup system may be compromised or unavailable.  Remember, cloud servers and backup systems can get hit with ransomware too. It's best to have a backup to your backup.
5. Patch servers and computers regularly and update firmware on hardware devices. 

Last but not least, make sure you have adequate Cyber insurance that covers ransomware events, extortion payments, legal and forensic fees and data recovery in additioon all of the other beneficial coverages that are provided by a Cyber Liability policy.  

Mother’s Day is a special day to honor all moms and while we honor our own moms, we wanted to give a shout out to all of the moms who are part of our team!

Despite being full of positive, useful and educational information, the internet is chock-full of potential dangers, and your children can unintentionally get into quite a few uncomfortable and, sometimes, dangerous situations. These risks are even more prevalent now, as many parents are working from home and children are attending classes remotely. As highlighted in our past blogs on this topic, if you have a standard Homeowners policy, you will likely have little protection from the legal liabilities that can result from inappropriate actions via the internet. So, what can you do?