Doing business in an increasingly connected and digital-first world presents many opportunities to reach new customers and expand operations. It also means protecting your business against increasingly frequent and always evolving cybersecurity threats like computer attacks and cyber extortion – making cyber insurance a critical safeguard for businesses both large and small.
Cyber Threats Facing Your Business
The first step in preventing cyber threats is being vigilant against the most common tools and tactics used by cybercriminals:
- Malware: Malicious software that once downloaded to a user’s system, typically by clicking an inauthentic link or downloading an inauthentic program or file, seeks to corrupt or steal data, monitor information, and/or take over the system. Malware is the collective name for different types of malicious software like viruses, spyware, and ransomware.
- Phishing: A tactic that seeks to trick a user into voluntarily giving away or otherwise disclosing sensitive information like a password, social security number, or bank information by impersonating a trusted official or institution via email, text, or telephone communications.
Computer Attacks and Cyber Extortion
Next, it is important to understand frequently used terms to describe cybersecurity threats and the subsequent damage they cause:
- Computer attacks manifest themselves in three different ways: unauthorized use, meaning the gaining of access to your computer system by an unauthorized person or persons or an authorized person or persons for unauthorized purposes; malware attacks, meaning damage to your computer system or data arising from malicious code (including viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, and keyloggers); and denial of service attacks, meaning a successful attempt by a cybercriminal to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its users by disrupting hosting services.
- Cyber extortion, which includes a demand for money based on a credible or series of credible threats, also manifest themselves in a multitude of different ways: launching denial of service attacks; leveraging stolen information and threatening to release and/or publish sensitive data; damaging the computer system; destroying or damaging data stored within a computer system; and causing the transfer, pay, or delivery of any funds or property using a computer system without authorization.
Safety Insurance offers both Cyber Risk Coverage and CyberOne coverage for Businessowners. We also offer a Home Cyber Protection coverage endorsement on our personal property product.
Please view our products for more information on our endorsements. Please contact your independent agent and they will be happy to answer any questions about coverage. Safety Insurance helps you manage life’s storms both online and in person.
