Learn key action items from the webinar that you can incorporate to establish a comprehensive cybersecurity program.
Understanding cybersecurity and cyber insurance are critical in today’s world, but considering the breadth and depth of the topic, it can be difficult to know where to start. In this webinar, we spoke with a panel of cyber industry experts to learn more about cybersecurity and demystify the relationship between cybersecurity maturity and cyber insurance for small- and medium-sized businesses. This article outlines some of the key action items that you can incorporate to establish a comprehensive cybersecurity program.
Why Cybersecurity Matters
In today’s digital climate, cyber threats abound—and they’re becoming more and more sophisticated. Most business leaders did not grow up learning the ins and outs of cybersecurity and how to protect their assets in the digital space. However, as cyber issues grow in complexity, it’s important to be able to filter through the noise to find accurate, relevant information and identify the cybersecurity solutions that are right for your business.
Enacting proper cybersecurity measures is crucial to protecting your business online. If your sensitive information is compromised, you can not only lose money. You can lose the trust of clients and valued business partners. For this reason, it is incumbent upon organizations to do their research and determine the most effective solutions for maintaining their privacy online.
Where to Start
Getting started with cybersecurity requires strategizing. Because most businesses lack the experience to develop solid strategies on their own, it’s recommended that you find a trusted advisor. This should be someone that’s an expert in their space and is interested in protecting your organization, not just driving sales for their organization.
When you find that trusted advisor, the first thing you want to do is have them perform an assessment so that they can understand what they’re working with. They can tell you what’s working well with your current security program and expose your vulnerabilities. Using that information can help you develop a strategic plan. You should also take this opportunity to ask about the current state of your cybersecurity program, as well as your potential future state and what steps you can take to get there.
If you are a business owner looking to transfer the risk via a cyber insurance policy, you should look for an advisor that focuses specifically on the cyber insurance space. Your advisor should be painting a landscape for you for the future, letting you know where you currently stand and what’s coming down the pipeline.
How Cybersecurity and Cyber Insurance Can Merge in the Future
Cybersecurity and cyber insurance are likely to converge in a more collaborative experience in the near future, yielding potentially outstanding results. Within the next few years, insurance applications for cyber will be obsolete. Businesses will soon have the ability to assess their vulnerability structure with advanced scanning.
Your MSP or internal IT staff will already have the security controls documented, and so from there, if you can create a more transparent environment for your insurance carrier or through your broker, there is less need for an application. Additionally, technology will increasingly allow businesses to get critical information to underwriters, removing that burden from CFOs and IT teams and streamlining validation. While there are still likely to be some things that require manual verification, the process is likely to become much more simple down the road.
How Cyber Insurance Differs From Other Types of Insurance
With other types of insurance, what you get is what you pay for. Cyber insurance is a bit more complex. It can help to think of the first two pages of your policy giving you coverage and the other 100+ pages taking away coverage. Cyber insurance typically involves carve-back endorsements or provisions that grant coverage that was otherwise excluded.
Simply put, with cyber insurance, you need to read the fine print to determine exactly what you’ll receive—and won’t receive—with your chosen policy. Doing your research and asking questions is key to finding the insurance plan that is right for your business.
Don’t Neglect Cybersecurity
When it comes to cyber threats, many businesses have a mentality of “it will never happen to me.” But the reality is that cyber threats impact everyone, and as attackers adopt more advanced techniques, it has become more important than ever to know where you stand and determine what you can do to increase your security.
Trava offers a free cyber risk assessment so that businesses can get a better idea of how they’re faring and what they could be doing better. Your Cyber Risk Report will provide you with a score outlining your overall performance so that you can determine what steps to take next.
