By Emma Dylan
Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes that small and medium businesses make – regardless of how well established they are – is thinking that there was no way they could be the victim of a cber security attack. Ironically, believing this in many cases opens them up to cyber attacks due to them not being adequately prepared. It’s actually the case that as long as there is some valuable data or easy access to finances, a business is very much open to a cyber-attack – especially if it’s easy. It is for this reason that cyber insurance has been introduced, so in this article we take a look at whether investing in this security insurance is a good step or not.
Why should you consider cyber insurance?
There are a lot of reasons why you might be considering cyber security insurance, particularly considering how many high profile cyber attacks have been directed to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, such as eBay, Domino’s Pizza and Ashley Madison. It is precisely because so many attacks have been launched at big companies that small ones think they’re safe, but this simply isn’t the case. If cyber criminals can breach bug business, small business is a piece of cake, and overall, it requires very little effort to extract some relatively precious information, whether it be customer data, intellectual property or financial information. Although this would be disastrous, one of the other things you have to consider as a business owner – whether you’re a SME business owner or enterprise – is that mistakes can make cyber crime possible as well. This might mean you or one of your employees doing something careless – such as leaving a laptop somewhere unsupervised – can lead to someone exploiting your business’s personal information more simply than you might think.
What cyber security offers
Cyber insurance should be a part of any business’s effective risk management plan simply because it works in a huge variety of ways to digitally protect them. Huge costs are associated with issues related to cyber breaches such as implementing thorough Investigations and Forensics, Credit Monitoring, Restoration of highly valuable data, ransomware demands, the management of public relation, any fines that may arise due to the Australian privacy act, repair to key digital systems, interruption to business and also to any relevant compensation claims. It should be clear by reading this that a lot can go wrong when it comes to an unexpected cyber-attack, and being sufficiently prepared is the best – and often only – thing you can do. It can also mean serious damage to your brand occurs, which can have very far reaching and long lasting consequences, and the compensation that cyber insurance offers in this respect can absolutely be valuable in helping get a business back on its feet quickly.
Cyber insurance may be perfect for your business
Although you may think that cyber insurance may be prohibitively expensive, this cover for the most part scales seamlessly with the size of a business. This means that a small business might only have to pay a few hundred dollars a year, but that small amount of money can go a long way to helping bear the brunt of a cyber attack from career cyber criminals.
