Are you at Risk of a Data Breach?
September 27, 2016
Who is the main target?
Have you ever considered your risk for a data breach? If you think it’s a crisis that is rare in your industry or organizational size, you may want to re-evaluate the multitude of venues for a cyber or data breach to occur. According to the Symantec 2016 Internet Security Threat Report, construction, manufacturing, transportation & public utilities, finance, and wholesale trade were among the top 10 sectors breached by the number of identities exposed.
The size, along with the nature of your business, does not detour you from being at risk. “In the last five years, we have observed a steady increase in attacks targeting businesses with less than 250 employees, with 43 percent of all attacks targeted at small businesses in 2015, proving that companies of all sizes are at risk” (Symantec).
How does it occur?
Studies show that the top threats for data breaches at 58.7% are done through hacking, and 30.6% over the web (Risk Based Security, Inc). This means that at any time you, your employees, a vendor, or other third party group has confidential information and internet access, the threat comes directly from malicious websites, links, and emails that may be hard to recognize.
Data breach can occur in many forms. A few ways a data breach can unintentionally occur are:
· Any employee loses a mobile device, and it gets into the hands of the wrong person
· A vendor, contractor, sub-contractor, or any other business partner misplaces your information
· An employee opens an email containing ransomware
· A disgruntled employee intentionally steals data
What will it cost me?
“Claims rang[e] up to US $15 million, while typical claims ranged from US $30,000 to US $263,000” (Symantec). The possible costs your business face include incident investigation and third party forensics, offline business interruption costs, fines and penalties for PII Compliance, ransom costs, a public relations firm fees in case the breach goes public, and the monitoring of your staff depending on the situation.
These extraneous costs of risk can all be avoided by a very cost-effective insurance policy. Being proactive could potentially save you hundreds of thousands. If you would like more information, please contact your IBTX Risk Advisor at 800.880.6689.
Sources:
2016 Symantec Internet Security Threat Report
2015 Risk Based Security, Inc. Data Breach QuickView Report
Posted by Morgan Rand in Blog