All businesses need cyber insurance cover in this growing digital age. This even extends to ‘brick and mortar’ businesses as they will also use aspects of digital technology, despite being a physical entity. 

Shockingly, two thirds of businesses show some lack of confidence in understanding and assessing their own cyber risk, which is why cyber cover is so essential to modern businesses.

The insurance sector is continually expanding to meet this demand, with cyber cover one of the fastest growing parts of the industry. It’s necessary growth, with the IT Pro Portal finding that businesses in the UK face an attack online every 2.5 minutes according to analysis from earlier this year, and the average cost of a data breach reaching £1,230 for smaller businesses. 

Businesses urged to be digitally responsible
As much as the insurers can provide protection to your company, it is also up to members of staff in the workplace to adopt safe digital working practices. You may recall a record £183m fine for British Airways as a direct result of a data breach which redirected customers to a fraudulent site and harvested the data of over 500,000 people. It was the first to be made under new Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) rules which cited poor security arrangements as the reason behind the breach, which is particularly key as elements such as security negligence could invalidate any potential cyber insurance claim. 

What you can do to help
Businesses often focus heavily on external threats to their company but fail to remember the internal threat that equally poses great risk to their business. A disengaged workforce can lead to increased errors, lack of productivity, and carelessness, all of which can lead to cyber hacks such as falling for phishing emails or contacting the wrong email address. For the workforce to remain engaged, it requires continuous encouragement and awareness training from employers. 

What will insurers require from you?
Insurers will question the types of data that your business holds as well as your working practices which, will affect your premium. They may also ask if your company patches software vulnerability, or whether you use third party firms for security audits and assessments as part of your assessment. 

Taking measures to prevent cyber-attacks can not only reduce how much you pay for insurance but more importantly, increase your likelihood of an insurance pay out should anything happen. Some precautions that your workplace can adopt include hardware and software network security, data loss prevention procedures, multi factor authentication, and encryption.

With 5G technology set to transform industries with greater connectivity between objects, devices, people, and information, the digital risk is ever growing. Greater digital communication also creates a greater opening for vulnerability. The insurance market needs to keep in the know with all the latest developments to digital technology to ensure cover offered to its customers remains competitive and advanced.