What is your business doing to protect itself from the cyber liability threats it faces? Hackers see small businesses as cash cows and the number of cyber breaches has grown exponentially in recent years. Smaller to midsize businesses have become the quick and easy target for cyber criminals because of easy access and high payout. As a business owner, you must evaluate your risks and have mitigation strategies in place.
Does your business have best practices in place to help mitigate your cyber risks? Cyber liability exposures are interlacing; your data is transferred and spread through employees, outsourced suppliers and vendors. In one way or another, virtually all businesses outsource some part of their operations. Due diligence must be completed when outsourcing any part of your business. When you are providing secure data and records to a third party, there needs to be a methodical and strategic process in place that will not only protect your company’s secure information from a cyber breach, but will also provide adequate coverage should a breach occur. Loss or breach of data through an outsourced vendor can cause serious operational, financial, legal and reputational damage to any organization, regardless of the size.
Having a Cyber Liability insurance policy is not a cure all; no amount of coverage can fix the reputational damage that comes with a breach. Lost or stolen data, for example, depending on the situation, may not be covered under your insurance policy. It is absolutely essential to be proactive in reducing your exposures; it is much cheaper to be proactive than reactive when it comes to cyber threats.
At The ALS Group we help our clients take a three-dimensional approach to cyber breach risk mitigation by:
- Conducting risk assessments within their organization to evaluate cyber breach exposure.
- Adding indemnity clauses to vendor contracts to insulate and confirm the vendor has adequate coverage to protect our clients in the event of a breach.
- Creating and implementing best practices to prevent cyber exposures before they occur.
- Placing cyber coverage that meets your specific cyber liabilities.
If you would like to learn more about mitigating your company’s cyber risk exposures please feel free to contact our Managing Principal, Albert Sica, at 732.395.4251 ([email protected]).
