Protect Your Business With Cyber Protection Insurance

There is a persistent growth in cybercrime acts in the past few years. According to one research, one in five Australian businesses were attacked in 2019, of which half were small or medium enterprises. So, if you think that small businesses are unlikely targets for cybercriminals, you are wrong. Digital risk has become one of the biggest risks for any business nowadays. If your business has an online presence, which it surely does, like carrying transactions online, storing data, files and records on a computer system, it can be an easy target for hackers.

Whether your systems have been down for a few days or someone hacked your system for a few hours, you could be facing enormous loss of income, considerable reparation costs and downfall of your business reputation. And that is where cyber protection insurance comes in. It will protect you against digital business interruption, as well as picking up costs of repairing vulnerable systems and give you expert advice on how to deal with a security problem.

What Is Exactly Cyber Insurance?

If anything happens to your business information technology infrastructures, e-mails, websites, or other networks or servers, cyber insurance will protect against computer-related crimes and your loss of income. This can include targeted attacks such as phishing or malware.

There are different cyber protection insurance to consider for your business, but usually, the package will cover your business’ liability for a data breach involving sensitive customer information, like Social Security numbers, health records, account numbers, driver’s license numbers, credit card numbers and so on. It can cover first-party as well as third-party costs for financial and reputational damage repair if data is stolen, damaged, corrupted or lost.

Who Needs Cyber Insurance?

These days pretty much everyone needs cyber insurance. However, if you have a website, or you hold personal information on your customers or clients in digital form, or their payment details, you will definitely need such a policy. The truth is that hacking is a big threat and can shut down your website in an instant, so you can’t do business which means that you will not be generating any revenue.

Moreover, you will start losing your costumers as you will fail to provide the service you promised. And what’s even worse, if there is a data breach, you will have serious problems with your costumers because their personal information can be sold on the dark web and used for identity theft. So, what do you think, can you maintain your business without access to your e-mails, websites, servers and other online processes? Probably, not very long. As you can see, the consequences can be very serious, so maybe it’s time to think about that policy.

What Does Cyber Insurance Cover?

Data Recovery

It may cover costs to hire cyber experts to identify and remove malware and replace, restore, or repair damaged or destroyed data and software.

Breach Costs

It may cover reimbursement of your own costs when a data breach occurs, such as forensic costs to confirm and identify the breach. It may also cover costs to notify the affected individuals, crisis management and public relations costs and costs for credit monitoring services.

Business Interruption

Cyber insurance may cover the financial loss your business might suffer after the interruption of its network-dependent revenue. Due to technology growth, new business income perils were created, like viruses, programming errors, computer hacking or tech failures and that is why is good to have a cyber insurance policy that will cover your costs for interruptions from these events as well.

Cyber Extortion

With the excessive spread of ransomware and anonymous currencies like Bitcoin, network extortion demands are increasing. So if you have cyber insurance it will cover costs involved with ransom demands and prevention of future threats.

Privacy Protection

Cyber protection policies may cover costs to defend and resolve third party claims from a failure to keep data secure. It may also cover issues resulting from network security failure, including the transmission of a virus.

Notification And Monitoring

It may cover the costs of notifying customers of a security breach and monitor their credit card details in order to prevent further attacks. There are a lot more services that cyber protection companies offer, but it all depends on what kind of cybersecurity package you will choose.

Tips to Prevent a Cyber Attack

Even though you have a cyber protection policy, it is always advisable to implement other methods of protection as well, so you will minimise the possibility of a cyber-attack. Make sure to organise cybersecurity training for your employees so they can be aware of potential risks and can easily identify fraudulent e-mails. It is of great importance to invest in the right cybersecurity tools, systems and procedures as well. You can even create a cyber protection plan, tailored to your company and make sure that is constantly revised and updated.

As for the data, back up your data on a regular basis and make sure that backups are stored off-site and not connected to your network. Use anti-virus protection software or operating systems with embedded firewalls. However, a firewall should be the first line of defence when protecting your data, because it is a piece of security software which monitors all incoming and outgoing traffic through your network and it can detect unauthorised outgoing information, hackers, malware and other things that can put your computer at risk.

Another way to prevent a cyber attack is to keep credit card details away from your websites neither to keep them saved on notes or documents on your systems. Furthermore, when you transfer funds, make sure that at least two members of staff authorise it. As for passwords, make sure to set up two-factor authorization to keep your passwords secure.

You can also consider signing up for other types of business insurance, such as product liability insurance, workers compensation insurance, property insurance, business interruption insurance and others that can help you to protect your business from other dangerous risks apart from cyberattacks.