Are you cybersecure?
25 February 2021
There’s no denying that lockdown restrictions have accelerated trends like transacting business on-line and working more from home. However, this also raises certain risks associated with them, such as cybercrime.
It has been suggested that approximately three-quarters of cyber incidents result from human error – someone perhaps clicking on an email attachment that contains a virus which rapidly spreads across the network, or entering financial details into a bogus online form that is actually a ‘phishing’ scam.
Away from their usual working office and colleagues to ask for advice, people are more vulnerable, especially if they face both professional and personal pressures in the challenging environment caused by the pandemic.
Also, hackers with time on their hands and working in the comfort of their bedroom can spends long periods seeking out weak points in a company’s website or server, attack it and seize all the data, demanding a ransom to decrypt it.
“Many businesses think they will never be caught out but, without wanting to sound negative, it’s really a case of when, not if,” says Anders McLocklan, development director of Towergate Insurance Brokers. “Protection measures have to keep pace, and so do insurance covers.”
Anders has considerable experience of the hire industry. He previously spent 15 years working with a company that provided insurance services for HAE (Hire Association Europe) members and still has many clients in the hire sector.
Cybercrime’s impact can be as devastating as the loss associated with a serious fire at a company’s premises. Work is disrupted or impossible, equipment can be damaged, time is spent rebuilding systems and, perhaps most crucially, sales can be lost. There may also be penalties if regulations like GDPR have been breached.
A typical business insurance policy will not cover cyber risk as it is a specialist risk that needs to be assessed on an individual basis.
The level of threat can vary according to the type and size of business, the industry in which it operates, location and the systems that are in place. Towergate Insurance Brokers has a useful online questionnaire that suggests what a company’s level of risk might be.
Cybercrime is certainly on the rise and can affect any organisation. At the beginning of February it was reported that hackers had even attacked systems and encrypted files at UK Research and Innovation, the government-funded body investing in research and innovation.
So ensure you have systems and procedures in place to make your business cybersecure, and that you are protected if - or perhaps when - an attack happens.
Photo: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay
