With the Covid-19 pandemic leading to lockdowns, social distancing arrangements and working from home, you may have taken your eye off the ball when it comes to the threat of cyber-crime. In fact, the hackers are depending on this, and also feeding our appetite for Corona virus news and related products with tempting emails and websites.
You can and should implement security measures wherever possible, even though they can hold you up in your daily routines:
- Have you struggled to locate the 2-factor authentication code to gain access to your systems?
- Has web filtering prevented you from accessing a legitimate website? As our blog post shows, it sometimes helps when the computer says NO.
- Has an urgent email disappeared into your junk folder?
Your staff need all the protection you can give them, especially if they are working alone without the familiar support and sounding board of an office full of colleagues. They may also be using less secure internet than your standard office setup. It might be worth considering some cyber-awareness training followed up with test phishing emails; get in touch if you would like to learn more about our solution for this.
The truth is, however good your systems are, your business is still vulnerable to cyber threats and the impact of an attack could be devastating:
- One small business in the UK is hacked every 19 seconds
- Thirty-seven percent of UK businesses have reported a data breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the last year
- Sixty percent of businesses which suffer a cyber breach with no insurance in place will go out of business within 6 months.
(statistics provided by Carbon black report 2019, Hiscox study and report 18/19, CISCO report 2018)
Just as you insure your property with buildings insurance and your staff with employers’ liability insurance, you can protect your business against cyber attacks with Cyber insurance. Business policies may provide some protection in this area, but it is worth considering using a specialist.
What does cyber insurance do for you?
- Business interruption: recovering from a cyber incident can be costly
- GDPR impact: follow up work for a data breach – legal, PR, contacting clients
- Data loss: IT support to reinstate systems and recover data
- Money transfers: the cybercriminals may have fraudulently accessed your accounts
- Cyber extortion: as a final resort, you may be forced to pay the ransom.
We would be happy to introduce you to a cyber insurance specialist. They will be able to advise you on the protection your company needs and they even promise to provide a tailored quote with just 4 questions!
If you are concerned about cyber-crime – and you should be – call Computer Troubleshooters today to discuss the solutions on offer: 01732 300064.