Housing authority talks cybersecurity

For the first time next year, Highlands Residential Services, Cookeville's public housing authority, will be paying a separate insurance premium specifically targeted to cybersecurity.Director of Operations Chris Cassetty said the authority will be paying about $244,000 for property and general liability insurance, plus "another $7,000 on top of that" for cybersecurity insurance."That's gotten to be such a huge issue," he said. "Cybersecurity used to be included as part of the general package, but there've been so many claims on that, we had to (price it separately.)"Cassetty said the insurance company asked HRS to fill out a questionnaire "for the first time ever" about its computer usage."Our (premium) is $7,000. Other housing authorities our size, if they don't have some of the things in place that we have, their policy might be $12,000 or $13,000."The housing authority uses Cookeville-based Epion to keep an eye out for vulnerabilities."We've gone to longer passwords, we've gone to multi-factor authentication," Cassetty said. "And one of the things Epion does is send fake phishing emails and if (someone) responds to one of those, I get an email that says (someone) failed the test, and we may need to talk to them about (security)."Epion also offers training for HRS workers."There's a lot more in place to protect us, (and) the staff is much more aware," said HRS Executive Director Dow Harris. "And if we do get hacked, they help us."Cassetty said insurance company reps have said that it's no longer a matter of "if you get attacked, but when you get attacked."He said the premiums are also increasing because of a change in the way coverage is calculated. According to Cassetty, the "vast majority" of housing authorities in Tennessee are part of an insurance pool."We are self-insured with re-insurance to cover us if we have a really big loss," he said. "Up until last year, the re-insurance carriers allowed us insurance based on number of units. We are now paying insurance based on square footage, like every other business in the world. Whatever we have on our statement of values, our insurance will pay up to 110% of the loss and that's it."He said the cost of insurance using the pool is about 35 cents per square foot, compared to about 55 cents a square foot (for commercial insurance)."