How are you securing your small business against cyber attacks and data breach?
The reality is many small business owners are not aware that more cyber attacks are hitting small businesses. When your small business is unprepared for a cyber attack, hackers can have a free for all by stealing; money, employee details, customer data, and vendor information. A breach in data can damage the relationships that you have with employees, customers, and vendors but worst of all small business that has a cyber attack can go under within six months.
According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, cybercrime has increased by 250 percent since 2016. The frequency of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks has increased as well.
“Cybercrime extracts 15 to 20 percent of the $3 trillion global internet economy, and costs Canada 0.17 percent of its GDP — equal to $3.12 billion per year.” – as reported by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
Often we see cyber attacks on large organizations in the media, but don’t be fooled, small businesses are often used as a backdoor to larger organizations, and most cybercriminals realize that attacking smaller businesses may result in higher profits while maintaining a lower profile.
Small businesses face very significant cyber threats, StaySafeOnline.org states that small businesses account for over 70 percent of data breaches, while Visa Inc. reports that 95 percent of credit card breaches are from small business customers.
Large organizations rely heavily on information technology and allocate resources to strengthen their networks to prevent access to hackers, however, these resources are not available to a small business owner. Despite the resources large organizations have a “2016 survey published by data breach specialist NetDiligence found that approximately a third of cyber breaches were attributable to the actions of employees, and most commonly the employees’ actions were unintentional, such as responding to a phishing scam or making a mistake in their paper handling” For this reason, insurance is an important element is managing risk for any business of any size.
Insurance experts now consider the risk of cyber liability losses. You can take steps to limit risks by purchasing cyber liability insurance.
Imagine if your computer systems are hacked or customer, employee or partner data is lost, stolen or compromised. The cost to fix this can cost quite a bit.
Here are your cyber liability risks:
System recovery – replacing or repairing computer systems or lost data. Your company may not be operational while your systems are down which results in losses.
Liability – you make be liable for costs incurred by customers and other third parties as a result of a cyber attack or other IT- related incident.
Notification expenses – if your business stores customer data, you’re required to notify customers if a data breach has occurred or is even suspected. The cost of these communications can be costly as well.
Regulatory fines – If your business fails to meet compliance requirements, you may have to pay fines depending where you reside and the regulatory bodies in place.
Lawsuits – Large-scale data breaches have let to class action lawsuits filed on behalf of customers whose data and privacy was compromised.
What cyber liability insurance covers:
I can help you find the right insurance to protect your business. I can customize a type of policy that can cover several types of cyber risks including:
Loss or corruption of data
Business Interruption
Identity theft
Cyber extortion
Reputation recovery
To learn about how I can help you protect your small business, contact me and we can discuss your organization’s unique needs by providing a comprehensive or tailored package.
