Is it worth taking out personal cyber insurance in case you are caught up in a data hack?

The recent Optus and Medibank data breaches in which thousands of Australians had their personal information stolen have heightened public consciousness of the threat of identity fraud.

Information including names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, passport and Medicare numbers, and even healthcare claims have been posted online in the past few months as a result of the high profile breaches.

The products generally offer similar services with varying degrees of coverage.

Most products also offer credit monitoring to alert you of anyone trying to take out loans or open bank accounts in your name and will lock down your credit file to prevent such activity.

Short answer: no. These products are designed to limit the damage in the event your personal information is leaked by finding it quickly, limiting ID fraud in your name and potentially to cover any financial losses you might suffer.

Large companies often have cyber insurance designed to cover the costs should they come under an attack, but this is not always applicable to the customers of the business.

And, unless you work in tech, monitoring the dark web is probably beyond your expertise.

In some cases, companies will pay out costs incurred by customers for credit monitoring and document replacement, as was the case for customers caught up in the recent Optus breach.

Lemon also said customers who have lost money from their bank accounts are often compensated by the banks.

Consumer group Choice has not examined personal insurance for ID theft since 2014, but at the time labelled it as unnecessary insurance.

Lemon said cyber insurance for small businesses was still a good investment, and noted that insurance was getting much more expensive for larger companies, with increased carveouts including around ransomware attacks. Medibank told investors it had not taken out cyber insurance due to the cost involved.

Guardian Australia sought comment from Norton.