DATA BREACH
Protecting Your Business In The Event Of A Data Breach
Traditionally, when you purchased insurance coverage, you were focused on ensuring the protection of your material possessions, like your automobile, home, office building, shop, farm, farm buildings, and business vehicles. Purchasing insurance meant managing your risks and ensuring you wouldn’ t be left with nothing in the event of a loss. Why run the risk of having your achievements unprotected in a time of crisis? But now that most business professionals have adopted digital technology as a way of managing daily tasks, a gap has begun to form in our insurance protection as we leave the digital space we inhabit open to security breaches and vulnerable to attacks.
When the computer was widely introduced into the business world in the 1980s, it came with the promise of making business processes more efficient with the introduction of digital data storage. Businesses progressed from the bulk storage of client files occupying physical space to a safe, accessible, yet invisible storage space which minimized the labour-intensive work of physically managing files.
But with every step forward in digitizing business processes, a new set of invisible vulnerabilities has taken form. Data security is becoming a top issue as hackers have carved out their place in the digital world. They wreak havoc on both business and personal data by gaining access to sensitive, confidential information and releasing it into an untrustworthy environment. Now, in a world of fake news and alternative facts, file systems and data stored on a digital network are vulnerable to a breach.
A recent study found that one in three cyberattacks on businesses in 2016 resulted in an actual security breach. That number equated to three effective attacks per month. This study also found that it could take months to detect sophisticated breaches. It noted that most Canadian companies do not have effective technology in place to monitor for cyberattacks, and they are focused on risks and outcomes that have not kept pace with the threat.
In other words, cyberattacks are increasing their relevance and are now a serious threat to businesses, both big and small. Approximately 31 percent of reported breaches involved companies with fewer than one hundred employees 1. It also means many Canadian businesses are not adopting diligent practices, like purchasing insurance, to ensure their safety in the event of a security breach. Alternately, hackers are not the only digital peril as the most common breaches occur as a result of human error: lost or stolen laptops and storage devices, accidental mailing or emailing to the wrong individual, improper document or office equipment disposal, unintended posting or sharing of sensitive data, or carelessness by thirdparty vendors.
When it comes to cyberattacks, many people have adopted an optimism bias mindset where they believe“ It won’ t happen to me.” We’ re here to tell you that, unfortunately, it could. The biggest known data breach in history, and the most widely publicised incident so far, has been the hacking of more than one billion Yahoo email accounts in 2013, and then in 2014 of 500 million more.
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