Cyber Insurance protects your business

Cyber Insurance protects your business

July 18, 2022 / 5 mins read

Your business doesn’t have to be big to face a cyberattack that could cripple it.

Small and medium-sized businesses are vulnerable, too, whether you are in the Greater Toronto Area, Parry Sound or Kitchener. Cyberattacks can happen no matter your location or size.

As an Ontario business owner if you have customer data and other important information related to your business stored on computers and your server, you could be at risk for a cyberattack or data breach.

Cyberattacks are continuing to grow and cyber liability insurance is one of the fastest emerging insurance coverages.

What is cyber insurance

Cyber insurance protects your business from cybercrime. It’s a type of business liability insurance that protects you if your business’s information is hacked or breached by a malicious third party, or if it’s stolen internally.

Your Ontario business could be the victim of a data breach, phishing, social engineering or ransomware attack. Cyber insurance can help recover stolen data and repair damaged computers and networks and it can help restore stolen customer and employee identities.

It takes time and money to fix a breach, regain the data that was lost, and to advise all your customers whose information was stolen or compromised. Depending on the size of the breach and the information that was taken, the customers who are affected can sue your business for damages.

About one-fifth (21%) of Canadian businesses reported being impacted by cyber security incidents, indicate Statistics Canada’s most recent findings in 2019. Canadian businesses also reported spending a total of $7 billion directly on measures to prevent, detect and recover from cyber security incidents in that same year.

Be sure to talk to your insurance expert about the benefits of cyber insurance.

What can cyber insurance cover?

Third-party cyber liability insurance provides coverage for businesses that are responsible for a customer’s online security. If a customer sues your business due to a cybersecurity breach, third-party cyber liability insurance can pay for your business's legal expenses.

Cyber insurance can also cover the costs to notify affected parties, crisis management expenses such as public relations expenses to manage the damage to your business’s reputation and forensic investigations expenses to cover the costs of hiring a breach response firm.

Other cyber liability coverages you can consider:

Network Security: Provides third-party coverage from security failure, including theft of mobile equipment and system intrusions.

Digital Asset Loss: This coverage provides costs to restore or recollect digital assets.

Privacy Breach Liability: Coverage for breach of privacy law or the disclosure of protected and personal information.

Privacy Breach Expense: For unexpected expenses and/or costs of complying with privacy laws if your business loses personal information.

Business Interruption: Coverage of actual loss and extra expense if there’s a network outage caused by hacking, a virus, or a breach.

Cyber Extortion and Ransomware: This coverage protects your business against losses caused by ransomware and other types of cyber extortion.

E-Media: This third-party coverage protects your website and online content from defamation, libel, disparagement, and infringement.

Regulatory Defence: Covers the cost of hiring lawyers during investigations and the payment of any regulatory fines and penalties against you as a result of the breach.

Ask your insurance expert what coverages would benefit your business.

Different types of cyberattacks

Phishing: An attacker pretends to represent a trusted organization or person to trick a user into open a malicious attachment or clicking on a bogus link to potentially steal passwords or account numbers usually to get access to financial information.

Malware: Harmful software takes control of a computer, monitors the user’s actions and keystrokes, and sends confidential data from the infected computer or network to the attacker’s home base.

Ransomware: It’s a type of malicious software that blocks access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.

Ransomware is often spread through phishing emails that contain malicious attachments or through drive-by downloading, which happens a computer user unknowingly visits an infected website and then malware is installed without their knowledge.

Denial of service attack: A hacker floods a website with more traffic than it can handle, making it impossible for legitimate visitors to access the site.

Spoofing: A hacker imitates people or companies and even computers with the intent to trick people into giving up personal information to steal information, spread malware, attack a computer system, or bypass access controls.

Brute force: A cyber attacker attempts to decode encrypted data by trying as many password combinations as possible to get into a computer system.