The Expert Podcast

It's getting really bad out there for cyber attacks and cyber hacking, but it's not really doing too well for insurance. What do we mean? Well, the most recent cybersecurity breach wiped out $2 billion in market capitalization. This company lost billions of dollars in share value because they did not defend themselves against a hack. Many cyber insurance policies have automatic defense and protection. This company fell victim to it. When it comes to recovering after a loss, nearly one-third of data backups fail after a ransomware attack, meaning that if you're hacked and somebody attacks your system, your data recovery fails a third of the time. Again, having good holistic cyber insurance, cyber defense, and best practices in place will keep that failure from happening.

Even with all that doom, gloom, and bad news, it's not doing much to get people to buy insurance. Telling small businesses to buy cyber insurance isn't enough. We talk to hundreds of businesses every month, and very few of them see the immediate need for cyber liability insurance. Some of them will take some precautions and use some of our cyber defense, but very few of them are looking to have that coverage. What does that mean? Is it a right answer, a wrong answer, good judgment, or bad judgment? Not for us to say. Every business has to make their own decision about spending a few hundred a month or a few hundred a year on cyber insurance, but the bottom line is that it could be catastrophic, and the risk of it happening is probably greater than other perils that affect your business, whether it's fire, slip and fall, or even liability insurance. So look into it. Whether or not you get insurance or not, at least put some best practices in place to make sure your business isn't one of the 60% that goes out of business after suffering a cyber attack.