Glossary

Dependent business interruption

Cyber coverage for income lost when an outage or attack at a provider you rely on, such as a cloud host or payment processor, halts your operations.

Also called: DBI, dependent system failure, cyber contingent business interruption

Dependent business interruption (DBI) is the cyber policy's counterpart to contingent business income. It pays lost income and extra expense when a technology provider you depend on, such as a cloud host, payment processor, software vendor or managed service provider, goes down, and your own network was not the target.

Two questions decide the coverage. First, which providers count: many policies cover IT providers and treat other suppliers separately, and some require them to be scheduled by name. Second, what kind of event: a security failure, such as a breach or malware at the provider, versus a system failure, an unintentional outage such as a faulty software update. Whether system failure is included, and at what sublimit, varies. A waiting period of several hours commonly applies before the loss starts counting.

The July 2024 CrowdStrike outage showed the scale. CyberCube estimated insured losses from it between $400 million and $1.5 billion.

Read the definition of "dependent business," the list of covered events and the waiting period before you rely on it. cyber business interruption and dependent system failure and System failure, cloud outages and the CrowdStrike lesson cover the scenarios, and contingent business income is the property-policy version.

Last reviewed October 10, 2026

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Related terms

Business income Property coverage that replaces net income and continuing operating expenses, including payroll, while a covered physical loss suspends operations. Contingent business income Coverage for income lost when physical damage at a supplier, customer or other business you rely on, not your own premises, slows or stops your operations. Ransomware Malicious software that locks or encrypts a victim's data or systems and demands payment for the key, often with a threat to publish stolen files. First-party coverage Insurance that pays the policyholder directly for its own losses, such as damaged property or breach response costs, rather than defending claims by others. Extra expense Property coverage for the added costs of staying open after a covered loss, such as a temporary location, rented equipment or overtime.

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Writing a business continuity plan: a step-by-step guide How to write a business continuity plan: impact analysis, recovery times, plans for people, sites, IT and suppliers, testing, and how it fits your insurance. Civil authority coverage: when an order closes your doors Civil authority coverage pays lost income when a government order blocks access after nearby damage. The one-mile, 72-hour and four-week limits, and case law. System failure, cloud outages and the CrowdStrike lesson How cyber policies treat non-malicious outages and cloud failures, what the 2024 CrowdStrike and 2025 AWS outages showed, and which policy words decide payment. Contingent business interruption insurance and supply chain risk Contingent business interruption pays lost income when a supplier's or customer's property is physically damaged. How the forms work and where they fall short. What the COVID-19 business interruption lawsuits decided Courts mostly held COVID-19 closures were not direct physical loss under property policies. The key rulings, the exceptions, and what to check in your policy. Cyber business interruption and dependent system failure How cyber policies pay lost income and extra expense when systems go down, how waiting periods and dependent business interruption work, and what to ask.