Cyber Liability Insurance for Chemical Manufacturers
The federal chemical security program you may think governs your plant expired in 2023 and has not been replaced. Cyber Insurance Group has agents dedicated to cyber liability, comparing chemical manufacturer coverage across 12+ A-rated carriers.
Compare your chemical plant across 12+ A-rated carriers in about 4 minutes. Free, no obligation, and no need to know your limits in advance. We are an independent agency, so the recommendation is based on what covers your risk, not on one carrier’s product sheet.
Get My QuoteRecipes Worth Decades, On Networks Built for Uptime
A chemical plant’s most valuable asset is rarely its customer list, and its control systems were designed for availability rather than for defense.
Formulations do not expire
A stolen recipe or catalyst ratio stays valuable indefinitely, and a competitor who has it leaves no trace that you would ever see.
A bridge you did not draw
Vendor remote support, engineering workstations and historian servers routinely connect the business network to the process network whatever the architecture diagram says.
Consequences beyond data
An incident that reaches process control is not an information problem. It is a safety and environmental problem, and most cyber wordings were not drafted for that.
No regulator watching
With the federal program lapsed, nobody is inspecting your security posture, which also means nobody is validating the assumption that it is adequate.
CFATS Expired in 2023, and Nothing Replaced It
This is the single most misunderstood fact in chemical plant security, and it changes who is actually holding you to a standard.
What CISA says
As of July 28, 2023, Congress allowed the statutory authority for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program, 6 CFR part 27, to expire, and CISA cannot enforce compliance with the CFATS regulations at this time. The agency’s own program page is marked archived content. Source: CISA.
Why that is not good news
A lapsed program does not reduce the risk, it removes the floor. Facilities that implemented risk-based performance standards still have the controls; facilities that were planning to are no longer being chased. Meanwhile the attackers, the insurance market and your industrial customers have all continued as before.
Who holds you to a standard now
Your customers, through supply agreement security terms. Your underwriters, through questions about network segmentation and remote access that increasingly decide whether you are quotable. And every state your employees and counterparties live in, through breach notification law. Source: NCSL.
The coverage question this creates
Because the plausible worst case here reaches physical process rather than only data, the important question is what the wording does with physical damage and bodily injury. Many cyber policies exclude both. Ask how resulting physical loss is treated and how the cyber policy sits against your property and casualty program, before comparing premiums.
What is actually at risk, by what you make
- Defense and aerospace suppliers: what is really at risk is the government’s controlled unclassified information, and your eligibility to hold contracts at all.
- Chemical manufacturers: what is really at risk is formulations and process data, with no federal chemical security program being enforced since 2023.
- Medical device manufacturers: what is really at risk is the product itself, in a patient, under a statutory duty to keep it secure after it ships.
- Auto and OEM suppliers: what is really at risk is your customer’s production line, and the contractual charges that follow when it stops.
Why it changes the policy conversation
With no regulator setting the bar, the insurance submission has become the de facto security assessment for many plants. Our data breach response guide walks through what happens once an incident starts.
Built for Production, Not Just Paperwork
Production stops
Business interruption and extra expense respond to lost output and the cost of restoring operations faster.
Extortion against process
Cyber extortion coverage responds where an attacker holds control systems or stolen process data rather than encrypting an office file share.
Suppliers and customers
Dependent business interruption responds when a key supplier or logistics partner is the one compromised.
Data you still hold
Breach response and third-party liability respond for employee and counterparty personal information, which exists at every plant.
Before You Decide
The objections we actually hear from business owners, answered straight.
Is CFATS still in effect for chemical facilities?
No. CISA states that as of July 28, 2023 Congress allowed the statutory authority for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program to expire, and that it cannot enforce compliance with the CFATS regulations at this time. Facilities that built their security posture around CFATS are not currently being held to it by anyone, which is a very different situation from the one most plant managers believe they are in.
If the federal program lapsed, what governs our security now?
Your customers, your insurers and your state. Large industrial buyers increasingly set security requirements in supply agreements, underwriters ask about segmentation between business and process networks, and every state has a breach notification law covering personal information you hold. What you have lost is a single federal baseline, not the consequences of a failure.
What is actually valuable to an attacker at a chemical plant?
Usually the formulations and the process data rather than the customer list. A recipe, a catalyst ratio, a reaction profile or a scale-up procedure can represent decades of work and is immediately useful to a competitor. Unlike most stolen data it does not expire, and unlike a breach of personal information there may be no one to notify and therefore no public signal that anything happened.
Does cyber insurance cover damage to physical plant?
Only in specific circumstances, and often not at all without an endorsement. Many cyber wordings exclude physical damage and bodily injury, which is precisely the risk when an attack reaches process control. If an incident could move a valve, change a setpoint or disable a safety system, ask explicitly how the policy treats resulting physical loss and how it interacts with your property program.
Should we separate our process network from our business network?
It is the first question most underwriters ask, and the honest answer at many plants is that the separation is less complete than the diagram suggests. Remote vendor access for equipment support, shared engineering workstations and historian servers commonly bridge the two. That bridge is what turns an email compromise into a production event.
What does cyber liability insurance not cover for a chemical manufacturer?
It does not restore the commercial value of a stolen formulation, and it does not recover it from a competitor. It generally does not pay for plant damage or injury without specific cover, and it will not fund the network segmentation project you already needed. It answers the response, the liability and the interruption.
What Would Cyber Liability Insurance Cost Your Plant?
Pricing follows production value per day, how far business and process networks are separated, your remote vendor access, and the controls you can evidence. See the breakdown in our cost guide, or get a number for your facility.
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