What is Cyber Liability?

Posted: 5 years, 2 months ago

Does your business have a cyber exposure?

YES! Let's jump right to the point; every business has a need for Cyber Liability. More than ever, we are seeing these cybercriminals targeting small businesses. Although you may think of the big companies such as Sony, Target or Home Depot in recent years, it is now small mom-and-pop businesses that are targeted.

As an entrepreneur, you've probably rolled the dice many times in order to grow your business. Although you may not a gambler per se, you do accept a certain amount of calculated risk every day. According to the U.S.' National Cyber Security Alliance, about 60% of small companies that suffer a cyber attack are out of business within six months!

Are you really exposed to a cyber attack? Most businesses have a cyber exposure due to:

Collection of private information on employees, clients, vendors, etc
Data storage on computer systems, flash drives, laptops, personal devices, and/or third-party locations (i.e., Cloud)
Access to the Internet
Website or social media presence
E-commerce business transactions
Credit card transactions
State and Federal laws

<9>By now, you're probably realizing that your business has the threat of a cyber attack. So what could that mean to your business? Think about these stats:

According to the Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Study by Intel *, the average cost of a lost laptop is about $25,000
Small and mid-sized businesses are hit by 62% of all cyber-attacks. That is about 4,000 per day according to IBM
The average price for a small business to clean up after they have been hacked is $690,000. For middle market companies, that is over $1M
Cyber criminals rake in an average of $32,000 from small businesses.
Human error is one of the most common causes of cyber risk

Finally, what can you do to help safeguard your business? It makes you wonder, "if the federal government cannot protect its networks and data from cyber-attacks with almost unlimited resources at its disposal, how can we expect America’s small businesses to do so?" - Rick Snow, entrepreneur hurt by Phishing.

Basic employee training can help stop a majority of low-level threats.
Coach employees on data protection along with data security protocols
Maintain security software
Encrypt your most sensitive files
Don't open suspicious emails, unknown links, etc
Have a business continuity plan ready in case your business information has been compromised
Purchase Cyber Insurance and frequently update it based on your changing risk