The Expert Podcast

You think a cyber attack won't hit your business? Well, think again. Here's an example: one of many companies in California called Prospect Medical Holdings had devices shut down and others were forced to rely on paper records. This medical company was attacked by cyber ransomware attackers, and they own more than a dozen hospitals in many states and operate 160 clinics. The attack disrupted operations and is a firm reminder that cyber security threats pose a real risk to health care.

Now one of the things that you want to do to prevent this is first of all have constant monitoring you may not have an I.T Department you may not have that depth of of coverage but there are ways of obtaining this monitoring through different insurance policies holistic insurance policies in addition as soon as there's any evidence or notification that one of these events is happening you want to take action right away here's why many of these attacks happen over the course of weeks or months the hackers that got into the system probably got into the system many months before they launched their attack monitoring can find this intrusion many times the hackers get in they monitor email they monitor activity they gather data they gather records over time and then launch their attack if you can catch this intrusion when it happens and thwart the collection of data to prevent the intrusion on different email addresses you can keep the attack from happening altogether if the attack starts and you have a partner a cyber defense partner that you notify right away they can step in and even try to catch it then.

And then of course if it does turn into something full-blown you want you need to have capital to pay for this these attacks sometimes cost 500 000 to a million dollars worth of Damages there's contractual notifications required sometimes there's governmental intervention where you have to notify everybody in your network and provide credit monitoring and and other types of forensics so you want to make sure that you're aware as a company can happen to anybody this is a Healthcare Company can happen to Builders General Contractors accountants attorneys any Professional Services type Corporation could be vulnerable to these types of attacks so make sure that you look at this loss as relative to other types of losses your business could incur fire theft lawsuits that kind of thing and have the appropriate defense coverages available so it's not a deal breaker it's not a fatal event where your company has to go out of business there's a example of another company that had to auction off their assets to pay for the losses for Cyber attack.