Protect yourself — cyber risk is still very real

Are we safe? Are we covered? With technology woven into so much of what we do, it would be reckless not to weigh the risks that come with it.

We all want our privacy and our personal information protected. But cybercrime isn’t slowing down. Alert to the problem, the Government of Canada brought in new personal-information rules, effective November 1, 2018: companies now have to tell Canadians when their information is lost or stolen in a data breach.

You can buy cyber insurance as an individual, though it’s still uncommon in Quebec. It can cover remote fraud, identity theft, and the fallout from leaked personal information. You can also get identity-theft protection — usually as an add-on to your home policy — to soften the long-term damage of an attack. Your broker can walk you through it.

For businesses, from SMEs to multinationals, protection is a priority. The 2018 Allianz Risk Barometer ranked cyber incidents the second-biggest worry for businesses worldwide, and nearly 80% of French companies had been hit. Attacks run the gamut, from major financial fraud to global events like 2017’s WannaCry — ransomware that struck more than 150 countries and 300,000 business computers, hitting thousands of organizations including Honda, FedEx, the São Paulo Court of Justice, Cambrian College in Ontario, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and provincial governments in India.

PwC’s 2016 Global Economic Crime Survey put the cost of cybercrime at $50,000 to $5 million for 16% of Canadian organizations, while the share paying out more than $5 million climbed from 5% in 2012 to 12% in 2016. Factor in the hit to operations, premiums, compliance, productivity, customer perception, brand value and shareholder confidence, and the price tag topped $900,000 per attack in 2016. That same year, companies worldwide paid out more than $450 billion because of cyberattacks.

To blunt the damage, businesses need to make cyber-risk awareness a priority. Keeping every operating system and program current — and locking down who can access what — makes it harder for viruses, malware and other threats to get in. The human factor is decisive here: companies have to train their people and back it with solid cybersecurity policies to close the gaps people leave open.

Cyber insurance gives a business the assurance that it’s covered — for the owner’s losses from business interruption, for third-party losses, for costs tied to a privacy-law breach, for regulatory defence, for penalties or fines from the credit-card industry, and for professional services (IT, legal, PR, crisis management) and more. Your commercial broker is the best person to walk you through it.

Prevention is still your best protection against incidents that can spiral out of control, so it’s only sensible to take the threat seriously. Protect your business, your clients and yourself — and let’s find every way to bring your risk down together. Talk to a broker.