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March 6, 2023 - by Synoptek
As a business owner, you may feel that keeping up with cybersecurity has become more complex than ever. And you’re right.
If the first quarter of 2023 ends the same way as the year 2022, the world can be sure of one unfortunate fact: Online threats like ransomware aren’t going anywhere. Any hope that cybercrime trends would slow down as countries continued to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic has been well and truly dashed.
Ransomware alone has become an even more ever-present threat to businesses, organizations, and municipal entities. According to cybercrime watchdog reports, as of October 2022, the number of reported ransomware attacks had already risen by 13%. As if that unlucky integer wasn’t sobering enough, that increase is as large as the last five years combined.
These facts aren’t presented as a scare tactic. It’s the reality modern organizations must face when considering the effectiveness of their cybersecurity. It’s no longer just a line item on the budget for an in-house IT specialist. It’s a seismic shift in how most organizations do business, no matter how dependent they are on technology.
The pervasiveness and sophistication of ransomware and other online threats cause more and more businesses and groups to turn outward to seek help. For some companies, that means seeking data insurance coverage to cover the financial losses associated with ransomware payments, business downtime, and long-term reputation damage. It’s important to note, liability insurance isn’t an automatic “Get out of jail” card.
Everyone from corporate CEOs to small business owners may be surprised to learn there’s a direct correlation between established cybersecurity measures and eligibility for coverage.
Because of poor ransomware protection and customer interest in coverage, carriers have established minimum requirements that have to be followed before prospective policyholders can even be covered, much less expect a payout.
Meeting those requirements begins by considering your company’s data as more than text on a screen or a series of ones and zeros streaming through networks and servers. Data is as much an asset as the hardware you use to access it, the building that houses that hardware, or even a company vehicle. You wouldn’t hesitate to insure those assets, and those policies come with requirements for managing them.
Think of cybersecurity as healthcare. The more steps a person takes to manage preventative care and lead a healthy lifestyle, the more benefits they’re likely to receive from carriers, including lower premiums because they can pay less for isolated incidents than chronic problems. If security is a persistent issue that hasn’t been adequately addressed, insurance carriers will likely find your “pre-existing condition” too risky.
The backup strategies you implement will be largely dictated by where the data is coming from and where it’s going for safe storage, including onsite servers, offsite data centers, physical hard drives, and cloud storage.
For many data insurance providers, sufficient backups mean setting up routine backups and storing one or more copies of backup data in physical hardware, on the cloud, or with a hybrid approach that diversifies the location of data storage as a means of defense.
Don’t get us wrong, great backups are still one of the best responses if your organization is ever faced with a ransomware attack. Backups should be a key part of an overall business continuity plan, by mitigating the risk of business interruption in the event of a ransomware attack. But backups are just one of several critical factors in enabling ransomware protection.
As you can imagine, many companies feel out of their depth when it comes to data defense. But you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. At Synoptek, we provide Ransomware Defense & Protection Services to a diverse clientele, including insurance brokers, syndicates, defense firms, third-party administrators, underwriters, and risk managers, so we know a thing or two about qualifying for data insurance coverage.
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