Protection through cyber risk insurance

Protection through cyber risk insurance

According to the European Commission, up to 80% of European companies have experience with some type of cyber attack. And it's not just about the biggest companies on the market. At present, almost no company can do without the use of technological equipment, software or systems. This is what hackers rely on.

Although we can protect computers and smartphones by using antivirus software, this defense may be far from sufficient. Hackers are many times a step or two ahead of antivirus manufacturers who are simply responding to existing viruses. The most interesting for hackers are companies that collect various entries and work with a large amount of various data about their customers. Data is a desirable commodity, but also a very vulnerable link whose protection should not be neglected by any company.

What are the risks?

The size of the business and the area of ​​the business are irrelevant, because the loss of information from the data storage or laptop, but also threats from cloud computing can happen to anyone. For example, hacking an e-shop can cause a loss of earnings for entrepreneur. Cyberattack can damage or destroy the necessary data, steal corporate know-how, and lead to the loss of customers and suppliers as the company's reputation is damaged. Consequently, the enterpreneur has to bear financial fines, and all this leads, of course, to a loss of profit as such.

This is one of the reasons why the European Union has decided to protect personal data by GDPR. Companies had to adapt to the new legislation and meet the demanding conditions of this law. Commercial insurance companies have reacted in their own way - creating products that comprehensively cover the GDPR requirements.

How to protect yourself?

The insurance of cyber risks should not be neglected in particular by small and medium-sized enterprises or self-governments, which are very vulnerable to hackers, because they have a smaller amount of means for eventually solving cyber attacks. In the event of failure of the employee or the system itself, the company has a source of finance that it can use to compensate the damage. Insurance can be used by anyone using an automated management system, traders or service providers, but also by those using payment terminals and electronic systems. Basically, any of the legal entities or sole traders who process personal data can use it.

Individual insurance policies vary from one provider to another, but can cover, for example, legal protection costs, reputation protection, data breach investigation and leak resolution, ransom demanded by intruders, lost profits and fixed costs when operations are forced to discontinue due to cyber attack, but also third party claims.