One bad deploy reaches production before anyone can stop it
You own the pipeline that ships every change to production. Skip a gate, run a script that deletes the wrong resources, or let a credential leak through automation, and the damage doesn't stay contained to the feature you were touching. It spreads through the whole environment. Professional indemnity and cyber cover, built for DevOps work.
Where a DevOps engineer actually gets exposed
Your risk compounds because you don't just write changes. You own how they reach production and what has access to make them. Standard business insurance doesn't cover the automation, credentials or infrastructure decisions that carry the real risk.
The deploy that skipped the gate
A misconfiguration in the CI/CD pipeline you manage pushes an untested build straight to production during the client's peak trading hours, bypassing the usual approval gate.
The outage costs the client significant revenue, and they argue the pipeline should never have allowed it.
The script that deleted the wrong environment
An infrastructure-as-code script you run to update the client's environment mistakenly tears down production resources instead of staging.
Recovery takes days, and the client seeks the cost of the outage and the rebuild.
The leaked secret
An API key exposed through a misconfigured pipeline is discovered and used by an attacker to access the client's production systems.
Under the Privacy Act, the client has to notify anyone affected, and they say the credential handling in your pipeline was the cause.
Who's going to ask you for it
It's a condition of holding production access
For DevOps engineers, cover is often tied directly to the level of access you're granted:
- Enterprise and scale-up clients commonly require $2M–$10M professional indemnity before granting production credentials.
- Consulting and staffing agencies flow their own insurance requirements down before placing you.
- SRE retainer agreements often set cyber limits given the standing access involved.
The exclusion DevOps engineers assume is covered
Bypassing established rollback or change-management procedures without authorisation can complicate a claim. Cover is built around reasonable process, not shortcuts taken under pressure. Document deviations where you can.
A pipeline instability you'd already flagged to the client and hadn't fixed is also typically excluded. Cover responds to what you didn't see coming.
Common questions
I automate deployments, I don't write the application code, so where's my risk?
The risk is in what the automation touches. A pipeline or infrastructure script failure can take down an entire production environment in seconds, and the client's loss doesn't depend on whose code shipped. It depends on what broke.
Isn't this just professional indemnity?
PI is the core, but DevOps engineers typically hold broad production credentials and secrets, so cyber exposure is significant. ICT cover combines professional indemnity with cyber so there isn't a gap between policies.
What limit should I get?
Match it to your client's requirement or your agency's flow-down terms. Enterprise and scale-up engagements often name $2M–$10M. If you're unsure, we'll read it with you before you buy.
Does it cover a deploy I ran before I was insured?
Professional indemnity is claims-made and usually responds to claims first made while you're insured, provided the issue wasn't already known to you. It's worth having cover in place before a dispute surfaces.
A client needs a certificate of currency before granting production access. How fast?
Once you're bound, a certificate is quick to issue. If access is waiting on it, tell us and we'll prioritise it.