Cyber insurance is a type of insurance that protects businesses from financial losses that can result from a cyberattack. While it’s an essential tool for businesses of all sizes, there are some facts you should be aware of before purchasing a policy.

As a small business owner, you may think you are “too small” to be the target of cybercrime because you aren’t a large, multimillion-dollar company. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Although the media mainly focuses on attacks on big businesses, small businesses are low-hanging fruit for cybercriminals.

One of the biggest challenges that small and medium-sized businesses face is how to use their limited resources most effectively. Every decision, from what products or services to offer to how to market and sell them, must be made to protect their bottom line.

While you would not expect a technology company to discuss topics such as trust, we're not like most managed service providers (MSPs). We understand how technology affects trust and impacts your people, processes and bottom line. That's why we're here to show you how to leverage trust to achieve your organizational goals.

With the business world heavily reliant on digitalization in this day and age, the use of technology in your organization is unavoidable. Although technology can undeniably give your business an advantage in increasingly competitive markets, there are many troublesome areas to keep an eye on. This is why interest in cybersecurity has risen in recent years.

April 2022 Volume 17 Issue 4
From the desk of Michael Aliperti, MS-ISAC Chair

For two years, you’ve accumulated digital clutter and technical debt at a rate previously considered impossible, at least pre-pandemic. The good news is that spring has sprung, and spring is the time when we all agree to pretend we enjoy cleaning.

The cyber insurance market has completely shifted over the last year. An increase in the number of claims and larger monetary damages associated with those claims has caused insurance carriers to adopt stricter underwriting guidelines, decrease coverage limits, and increase rates.

Over the years IT providers to small and medium businesses have built their relationships with clients on several different business models to provide various services. The foundation of the relationship has been help-desk, managing and maintaining technologies, and performing projects.

Although businesses today are becoming more aware and familiar with the increasing need to protect their IT (Information Technology) systems and data there remains a common misconception among small and medium businesses that they are not a target because they either are too small to notice, or they do not possess any non-public personal information that a bad actor would want to steal and sell on the dark web.

Cyber incidents continue to rise in 2021 with small and medium businesses dealing with ransomware, business email compromise and account takeovers. While large companies and ransomware dominates the nightly news and newspaper headlines the same activities are plaguing small businesses as well.