Cyber Insurance

Cyber breaches are emerging as one of the top risks as businesses creating, collecting and sharing information online become more reliant on technology. For a small business even a minor cyber security incident can have a devastating impact.

Cyber criminals may be an individual or a group of people. Threats to your technology or data might come from:

• Criminals – out for money or information by illegally accessing your hardware and data or disrupting your business
• Third-party service providers – may have weaknesses in their own security processes and systems that you are reliant on in order to do your business
• Business competitors – looking to gain an advantage over your business
• Current or former employees – who accidentally or intentionally compromise your information

Your money, information, technology and reputation could be at risk.

• Financial loss – theft of data for monetary gain, private information, disruption to business
• Business loss – damage to reputation, damage to other companies you rely on to do business
• Costs – getting your affected systems back up and running
• Your time – notifying the relevant regulators and complying with notification requirements

The Insurance Council of Australia indicates that significant underinsurance for cyber risk is a concern, estimating only 20% of SME’s have standalone cyber insurance.

Having the most up to date cyber security practices and tools in place to protect your business is essential, insurance is another resource to get you back up and running should an attack occur.

• Crisis management costs – lawyers, IT forensic investigators, credit monitoring firms, mailing and call centres, public relations experts
• Extortion costs – immediate access to Bitcoin and trained negotiators
• Business interruption – lost income due to downtime
• Data asset restoration – restoring data that is damaged or destroyed
• 3rd party liability – coverage for lawsuits brought by regulators, business partners and affected individuals