Cybersecurity has become a major concern for small businesses in today’s digital age. Many of them are struggling with cyber insurance and implementing policies due to the rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape. Small businesses often cannot dedicate an entire team of people to it, so they resort to cyber insurance rather than prevention. Usually, the cyber insurance policy includes procedures to prevent these activities. So, what are the numbers behind this deficiency?
Well, according to an article from Insurance Business Magazine, 49% of these businesses plan to increase their cybersecurity budget in 2023. However, 61% of them do not have a dedicated cybersecurity expert within the organization. Almost half of them, 47%, do not have an incident response plan. Think about it. Half of the companies that were interviewed do not have a plan in case of a cyber incident.
Imagine if you asked a company, “Do you have an incident plan for fire? Do you know what to do if your building catches fire?” Most likely, everyone would have a plan. If you asked a thousand companies, you would unlikely find one without a fire plan. People wouldn’t just sit around, not knowing what to do if there was a fire. However, half of them don’t have a plan for a cyber incident, which is more common and likely to occur. In fact, a cyber event could be more expensive to recover from than your building burning down. A cyber event could have more long-lasting effects on your business and reputation. Having at least an incident response plan is a good thing to do.
Generating an incident response plan
If you have a cyber insurance policy, your insurance carrier will certainly put one together for you that requires it. Alternatively, you could put one together using various cybersecurity companies’ tools. However, according to the report, mid-sized businesses are struggling to implement basic training measures and recruit the iStat. They reveal they have not deployed threat monitoring, detection, and response.
Shockingly, only 9% of workers adhere to security practices, creating significant obstacles in fighting off cyber attacks. The hackers know this and love every minute of it because they want to find easy targets. A survey showed that 69% of responders reported they’re required to carry some form of cyber insurance, but 30% have no insurance coverage. That means almost half of the people who are supposed to have it don’t have it. Furthermore, 70% of the companies don’t have it at all.
As a business owner, this is good information that might give you a competitive advantage. If your competitors don’t have insurance, they’re more likely to get hacked and may be shut down for a couple of weeks. In such a situation, you can take over their customers. On the other hand, if you have insurance, you’ll be protected and less likely to be hacked in the first place.
Don’t leave your business vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Get a quote for cyber liability insurance from Risk Coverage.
