If you’ve seen the news recently you may have noticed the terms cybercrime and data breach appearing more often. The likes of Adobe and Microsoft have suffered large scale hacks recently but smaller businesses have also made the news, including a London based estate agent whose list of email addresses, usernames and passwords for 10,000 customers was posted online.
In order to raise awareness of this growing threat to businesses, Cardiff based Creative Risk Solutions, one of Wales’ leading commercial insurance brokers, held a Cyber Liability Seminar at the Cardiff City Football Stadium on Wednesday November 20th. With many businesses unaware of the risks presented by a data breach the Seminar aimed to inform people about the threat of cybercrime and prove just how easy it could be for companies to suffer a data breach, whether intentionally or accidentally.
First to be introduced by Jan Wilkins, Managing Director at Creative Risk Solutions, at the seminar was Simon O’Gorman, an IT security expert from Selex. A world leader in the development and supply of information security products and services, they provide computer forensics for cyber liability policies. His presentation gave an insight into the growing threat of hacking and proved just how easily your business could suffer a data breach.
It’s not all about underworld cybercriminals, a data breach is just as likely to be caused accidentally by someone opening an innocent looking email or losing a laptop or USB. It’s also more than possible for a system to get infected through the company’s supply chain. Nowadays anything that has a computer in it is open to attack, with systems being infected with malicious software through Smart TVs and even a company’s air conditioning units.
Most small businesses either deny that the risks apply to them or are blissfully unaware of the threats that exist, but the fact is 95% of attacks target well known vulnerabilities and 97% of attacks are easily preventable, so it would be foolish to dismiss data breaches offhand. With cloud computing offering even more opportunities it’s only a matter of time before every business will suffer some kind of data loss at some point, especially with cyber-attacks rising by 50% since 2011 and 87% of small businesses experiencing a data breach in 2012.
With so many factors out of a company’s control, firewalls and security systems only offer protection to a certain extent, thankfully Cyber Liability policies exist which can lessen the impact of a data breach if one occurred.
After Simon’s presentation Rachael Schoer, a Senior Development Underwriter at AIG, one of the largest companies specialising in the UK business insurance market, went into more detail about the costs relating to a data breach and how a specific Cyber Liability policy could cover them.
Cybercrime generates more income per year than the global porn and drugs industry combined, costing the UK £27bn a year. These costs, between £35,000 and £65,000 for SMEs, can be large enough to wipe out a small to medium business, especially alongside new European legislation that states companies should notify the Information Commissioner’s Office within 24 hours of a data breach being discovered. Failure to do so can result in fines of up to €1,000,000 or 5% of annual worldwide turnover, depending on the severity of the breach.
A traditional insurance policy won’t cover costs caused due to data loss, but Rachael showed that AIG’s CyberEdge could not only cover regulatory fines and defence costs, but also costs related to notifying anyone affected, as well as the repair or restoration of data, the use of a PR consultancy and an expert cyber forensics team.
Everyone emerged from the day knowing a little more about the risks that cybercrime and data breaches now pose to businesses, but also aware that there are policies available to protect you should you ever lose data from a cyber attack.
To find out more about Cyber Liability visit Creative Risk Solutions or call 029 2082 2600.
