We have already seen business, organizations, and even municipalities here in Newfoundland and Labrador fall victim to hacking, where they have had to pay ransoms to have their systems released. During this time of COVID-19, and during events like today’s Black Friday Sales, it is more important than ever to protect your online and digital assets.
Any business that uses computers is susceptible to hackers – it’s the world we live in. Whether it’s clients’ personal information, business finances, or your point of sale is shut down – there are many reasons hackers infiltrate the cyber security of a business or organization. Of course, ensuring your cyber security is tight by engaging a professional is the best way to avoid being hacked.
What is Cyber Insurance?
Cyber Insurance is designed to support your business if computer networks are breached, causing information to be stolen or ransomed, business operations to be interrupted, and computer systems to be corrupted. While Cyber Insurance doesn’t protect your business from cyber crime, it does keep you on stable financial ground should an event occur. Having Cyber protection means you can off-set the costs of recovery should a breach occur, giving you one less thing to worry about when working to resolve the situation. Some common expenses covered by cyber insurance include:
Businesses losses
This could include monetary losses from shutting down operations, cost of data recovery, or the cost of public relations efforts to repair a businesses reputation.
Legal expenses
If sensitive client data is breached, lawsuits are a major concern and are often lobbied by affected customers. This could also include cyber extortion, such as that from ransomware.
Investigation
An investigation will likely need to take place to determine what happened, how it happened, the ramifications, what data was breached, how to prevent the breach from happening again, etc. This often means engaging a third-party security company, and sometimes law enforcement.
Privacy notification
When a security interruption occurs, notifying affected clients or customers is of utmost importance. This may also include credit monitoring for affected parties.
Why You Need Cyber Insurance
These types of security breaches are common and can happen to anyone. Both small businesses and huge corporations can fall victim to a security breach.
It’s happening everywhere; we all have a friend who has warned us “that Facebook message didn’t come from me” – even at the lowest level, hackers are reaching people and stealing their information.
Getting started
In the complex world of cyber security, it’s not easy to know where to begin when working on protecting your business. Before reaching out to your insurance provider, determine what types of cyber security breaches you could be susceptible to, and what information could be at risk. This could include breaches in payment information or personal details, and attacks like ransomware, malware, or phishing.
This will make it easier for you and your provider to determine how much and what kinds of coverage you need. Creating an initial list of expenses you want to have covered in the event of an incident will also be very helpful.
If your business is moving more and more into a cyber space, make sure you’re protected.
Contact your Steers rep today
and ask about Cyber Insurance.