Do this: Find out in writing whether your business insurance covers a loss caused by software acting on your behalf.
PASTE THIS
You are an insurance analyst. Below is the wording from a business policy covering cyber or computer-related loss, plus every exclusion that mentions technology. Answer only from this text. One: is loss caused by software or an AI agent acting for us covered, or excluded? Two: which exclusion is closest, in its exact words? Three: what is the limit? Four: what must we report, and within how many hours? If the text does not answer, write NOT SPECIFIED. Do not guess. Then draft the two questions a 30-person firm should email its broker this week.
You'll get: Four answers, with the gaps marked NOT SPECIFIED. Most policies quietly exclude agent-caused loss under a computer-use clause nobody read at renewal, and those gaps become this week's email to your broker.
The five lines to send your broker this week
Send these as a reply, not a request, and ask them to come back with the blanks filled in: Is loss caused by software or an AI agent acting on our behalf covered, or excluded? Which exclusion applies, and what is its exact wording? What is the limit, and does it sit inside or outside the cyber sub-limit? What must we report after an agent causes a loss, and inside how many hours? What is the notice period if we change this cover? Brokers answer the first two lines quickly. The last three decide whether a claim actually pays, and they are the ones most often left blank. If nothing arrives in writing before your renewal date, treat the cover as absent, because that is how a claim will be treated.
Every agent you deploy needs a login limit, a spend limit and an off switch, or it is not a tool, it is a liability with a password. Writing an AI use policy costs an afternoon; one unsupervised agent costs a quarter, and your insurer has not yet decided whether it pays.
Fortinet says attackers are already exploiting a flaw in FortiMail, the gateway that filters email before it reaches an inbox, and the exploit needs no login at all. Some administrators are still waiting for a patch. The Register has the advisory.
So what: ask whoever maintains your email this week whether FortiMail is in use and whether the fix is applied before Monday. A gateway is the one appliance every invoice, quote and payroll file passes through, which makes it the cheapest patch in the building.
The AI skill banks now pay 1,721% more for
CNBC puts demand for agent orchestration, the work of making several AI agents run together, up 1,721 percent at JPMorgan, Citigroup and Capital One. Anthropic said the same week it will spend $100M training 10,000 AI engineers. So what: decide this month whether the person who owns your AI tools is paid for that skill or merely volunteered, and put the role in writing before your next review. CNBC and Anthropic have the detail.
Somebody is finally selling cover for rogue agents
Reco, which governs AI agents across a company's systems, raised $55M this week, taking its total to $140M, per Techmeme. Axios reports agents are already running ordinary attacks at machine speed. So what: before renewal, email your broker one question in writing, does the policy cover a loss caused by software acting for us, and file the reply with the contract this month.
The memory crunch hit cheap hardware too
The 2 GB Raspberry Pi 4 that sold for $35 now lists at $67.50 and the Pi 5 took a $12.50 bump, The Register reports. Nvidia now charges $4,999 for a 64 GB version of its local AI box, $1,000 more than the 128 GB model cost at launch, per Techmeme. So what: get written quotes this week for the laptops and phones you replace this quarter, and order before the next increase.
This week's question: a vendor says its AI support agent will be trained on our data. Should that worry us? Only when the answer is vague. Ask three things in writing: what data trains the model, whether your data can improve a model other customers use, and how you get it deleted at the end. A vendor with a real answer returns all three within a day. A vendor with a marketing line answers the first and skips the rest, and that gap is the actual risk, not the phrase.
What would you fix first before your next insurance renewal?
A. Whether agent-caused loss is covered
B. The AI exclusion wording
C. The reporting deadline after an incident
D. Nothing yet
Reply with one letter — results next issue.
Which technology company told county officials this week that it has stopped using non-disclosure agreements for its data centre projects? Take a guess before you scroll on.
Answer tomorrow — and no, we are not printing it here.
YESTERDAY'S ANSWER
One European country registered 44,000 new web domains in September, up from about 2,000 in August. What set that off?
The push to rename AI as super intelligence. Slovenia's .si registry went from roughly 2,000 registrations in August to 44,000 in September, which the BBC reported and Techmeme relayed.
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