Cyber Risks businesses often underestimate
Cyber Risks are rising and evolving, so it's possible to believe you have considered the variables without being fully aware of new and sophisticated threats....
Below are the most common questions we get asked about Cyber Insurance and Cyber risks. If we’ve missed something you would like to know then please just ask at info@cyberinsured.uk. No question is a silly question!
Almost without exception that’s a yes! (always check the wording) Even better, most of our insurers include emergency response that kicks into action as soon as an event occurs. This relieves you of the stress involved negotiating a resolution with the attackers and ensures to back to business as usual asap.
Dealing with the consequences of cyber-crime can be stressful, damaging and expensive. Cyber insurance can ease the financial pain and help your business successfully navigate a cyber-attack.
As before. It’s the most common form of cyber breach so it is critical this is covered.
This is more variable between policies but is normally standard with dedicated cyber cover. With business interruption the t & c’s become important and working with your broker to fully understand what you would receive in any given circumstance is essential.
That said, we believe it is a very important and valuable aspect of cyber insurance as disruption often represents the biggest loss associated with an attack.
A good quality MSP should mean you are starting from a strong position in terms of cyber resilience. Most breaches come from some human vulnerability however and you can never be totally confident.
As such a good cyber insurance policy gives you the back up should your first defence be breached. Having effective cyber protection in place will be reflected positively in insurance premiums.
Cyber insurers will look for appropriate measures and protections based on the risks you face. The larger the business, the amount of data you hold and the more sensitive the nature of that data the more robust the protection an insurer will expect.
Before making presentations to insurers, we will always conduct an audit with you, your internal IT team and external IT partners. If there are gaps in your defences, you can then consider responding to these before we approach insurers.
Whilst rarely included as standard, Cyber insurance is increasingly offered as an add on to general combined policies. Be warned however that levels of cover are generally low and limitations can be quite restrictive.
This may be absolutely fine if you are in a low risk sector and do not hold sensitive data. If that isn’t you, then it is definitely worth considering what extra cover a specific cyber policy could provide balanced against the extra cost.
In many cyber-crimes it is not a technical frailty that has been exploited but someone being tricked into giving access to a system, transferring money or divulging confidential information. Like most scams they use a combination of trust (through impersonation), urgency (leaving limited time for verification and reflection) and fear (that there will be negative consequences to not acting).
| Staff training | Helping staff recognise suspicious approaches and how to report them. |
| Access | In IT speak applying Principle of least privilege (PolP). Basically all staff should have the minimum access required to perform their role. |
| Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) | Applying MFA makes stolen passwords far less useful to the cyber criminals. |
| Strong email security | Having an effective filtering tool can substantially reduce the volume of malicious emails reaching employees. |
| Payment process | Implement a strong verification process for changing bank details and dealing with urgent payment requests. |
| Incident response plan | Have a robust plan and ensure all staff know who and how to report an incident and that speed is key. |
Cyber essentials is a great benchmark to ensure you have all sensible protections in place. It also includes an element of cyber insurance.
This insurance element is a great start for smaller businesses but it does have some significant limitations – the biggest of these is perhaps that cyber fraud is not usually covered.
One of the UK’s first businesses to be cyber approved by the British Insurance Brokers Association
At Pelican, we work across industries for clients needing specialist cover:
Hear from some of our customers who have found the appropriate level of Cyber Cover.
Just send us an email with a few details about your business and we’ll jump straight on it.
If you’d rather chat it all through, we’re ready to begin a conversation – no jargon or tech, just plain English.