Cyber liability insurance is a type of coverage that protects your business from devastating cybercrimes, malicious attacks, and data breaches. Although the results of these attacks can affect your business in many ways, the objective of cyber liability insurance is to make sure your business will be able to survive even though you may have suffered damages.

Any business that has an online presence should consider getting cyber liability insurance. The number of cybercrimes that take place every year is frighteningly higher than you think. Disgruntled employees, customer data theft, fraud, hacking attempts leading to serious cyber attacks — there are countless cyber-related events that can cause undue stress for your business. Cybercriminals use a variety of ways to attack systems, here are 10 ways they do it:

Ransomware attacks

In a ransomware attack, a person or organization downloads a virus onto their computer system and encrypts all of the files on the computer. The only way to get access to those files again is to pay a ransom, usually in the form of cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.

Malware attacks

A malware attack by cybercriminals can damage website functionality and disrupt business operations for days or weeks as the IT department works to contain the damage and restore normal operations. The downtime associated with a cyber event can be particularly damaging to small businesses that rely on their websites for sales or services.

Phishing attacks

Phishing is the process of trying to get information from you by posing as a reputable source. Phishing usually entails sending an email that looks legitimate and asking for personal information such as passwords or credit card numbers, or soliciting your reply with information that may be used to access your accounts.

Phishing is not only used to get the personal information of individuals, but scammers commonly will pose as an executive of your company or another company in an attempt to gain private company information.

Internet of things attacks

The Internet of Things is a broad category of devices that have web connections and the ability to communicate with each other. For example, your smart speaker at home, your smartwatch, or your fitness tracker. These devices are often called “smart” because they can receive signals from the internet and respond to them in some way.

A common example of an IoT attack would be if someone hacked into a webcam installed in somebody’s house. Once inside the camera, the attacker could watch and record everything happening in that person’s home.

Denial of service attacks

A denial of service attack is a type of cyber attack that aims to make a system, network, or website unavailable to its intended users. This is done by flooding the target computer with junk data using powerful software tools.

A denial of service attack can be implemented in several ways. It can be a direct attack where the attacker floods the victim’s Internet connection with packets — the building blocks of data — overwhelming the victim’s machine and denying other web traffic access to it.

Server query language injections

A server query language injection attack is a type of SQL Injection attack and is one of the most common web application security risks. SQL injection attacks are used by hackers to steal information from organizations through web applications or websites.

SQL injections occur when a hacker enters code into a website’s URL that allows them to run commands in the database. When the hacker’s input is treated as valid code, the hacker can bypass any website admin controls and access all of the user data stored in the database.

Cross-site scripting

A cross-site scripting attack (XSS) is a type of hack that takes advantage of vulnerabilities in JavaScript code to insert malicious scripts. These scripts can then be used to access cookies, session tokens, or other sensitive information retained by your browser and used with online applications.

In an XSS attack, the hacker bypasses a website’s front-end server and inserts malicious code into the HTML. The result of this injection is that any user who then visits the site will have the code executed on his or her computer.

Man in the middle attacks

A man-in-the-middle attack occurs when a cybercriminal secretly intercepts and relays messages between two parties who think they are communicating directly with each other. The attacker is able to read and modify the messages before they reach their final destination without either party knowing that anything has occurred.

The attack is often carried out using spoofing methods to make a network resource appear as if it is legitimate in order to gain access to information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details.

Rootkits

A rootkit is a program that can exploit an operating system and gain administrative privileges to the target machine. They are difficult to detect because many times, rootkits will mask their tracks. Additionally, rootkits can be used to install malware on your computer or network.

Inside threats

It’s hard to believe, but sometimes the person who committed a cyber attack against your business is also an employee. Whether it was malicious or not, employees can pose to be a cyber threat. A disgruntled employee may cause harm to your company by attacking your data from within. With proper coverage, you can feel confident that your company will be protected from internal threats as well as external ones.

Businesses spend a lot of time and money building their online presence. Attracting and converting visitors into customers, delivering the right content to their clients—all of these things can help your business grow. A single breach in security could have disastrous consequences, from financial losses for your customers to devastating effects on your reputation. Cyber liability insurance helps protect you against any liability that might occur due to cybercrimes or internet security breaches. It’s up to you to make sure that your business is secure as well.

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