Too many small businesses today aren’t in a good position with cybersecurity. Oftentimes they’re more at risk than they realize. That’s why we recommend cyber insurance for all of our clients.

Types of Cyber Insurance

There are a few different types of cyber insurance. Basic insurance will cover recovery from a breach, for example, while some insurance coverages include everything from cyber recovery to PR to legal components.

Our goal as a managed IT service provider is to put our clients in the best position to respond to a breach if that were to happen. The ultimate solution is to get cyber insurance because you can do everything right and still have vulnerabilities.

There are a couple of ways that cyber insurance providers will give you support. If there’s an incident, an incident response team will come in to help you get back up and running. They’ll look at what happened, who did what when, and where the attack came from. Was there any data that was leaked or any information that was accessed that was sensitive in nature? They’ll figure out exactly what happened and then make a plan on how to respond.

If there are regulatory requirements involved, they can help the legal team with those aspects. That might include how you notify your clients that something happened. you might need to reach out to them, for example, if your data was breached.

When you look at the cost/benefit of cyber insurance, it’s clear that every organization should have it in place.

When we talk to business leaders in various organizations, everybody tends to assume that things are good. They talk to their IT person or IT vendor and ask if their risks are covered and they assure them that they are. But cyber security exists on a spectrum or a sliding scale. There’s always a little bit more to do to make you a bit more secure.

Types of Cyber Attacks

We’ve seen a lot of different types of cyber attacks over the years.

Phishing

Some are simple phishing attacks. One person’s account credentials are breached and somebody gets into their email and starts sending emails as that person. We’ve seen requests to transfer funds that looked legitimate, for example, that weren’t actually legitimate.

Ransomware

Ransomware is another type of attack. The organization’s systems are compromised and the information is locked up. And to get back up and running, you can either restore from a backup if you have one or you can pay the ransom.

Over the years we’ve seen a lot of different types of cyber attacks and worked with a number of organizations as they went through the process of recovering from a very stressful situation. Our team provided the right tools to be proactive and ensure they have everything in place from a technical perspective.

Even if you restore from a backup, for example, the true cost of the breach is oftentimes more than just the cost of recovery. If there is client data involved, or if transfers were sent somewhere, it can become very costly, very quickly.

Colonial Pipeline

One example of a recent cyber security incident is the Colonial Pipeline situation that happened in May.

In that case, a very large organization had to shut down due to ransomware. They paid millions of dollars in ransom, but the overall impact to their organization is significantly larger than just the ransom itself. The extended impact on their business and their operations will last for weeks or months as they try to recover.

It’s always better to be proactive and have a good plan ahead of time. That way, when something bad does happen, you’re covered. You have the ability to get back up and running as quickly as possible already in place.

How Managed IT and Cyber Insurance Work Together

Sometimes people ask how we work with the cyber insurance provider, or how cyber insurance fits in with the other CopperTree services. The reality is that both services are complementary.

Cyber insurance only gets activated in the event of a breach. And when there is a situation, they’ll bring in their incident response team, their PR team, and their legal team as necessary.

Once the incident response team understands what happened and what was accessed, we look at how to get your organization back up and running. How do we get you functioning again after everything shuts down? And that’s where CopperTree managed IT services is be involved in the process.

When you look at the value and the cost/benefit analysis of cyber insurance, it’s pretty cost-effective. In comparison to the ransoms that are getting paid, insurance makes a lot of sense for any organization.

Prerequisites for Securing Cyber Insurance

The cyber insurance industry is starting to mature, and as a part of that, insurance providers are starting to ask for certain prerequisites. This is driving our clients to put measures in place that they may not have had in place before.

Today, cyber insurance organizations have certain minimum standards that need to be met. And from our side, that helps our clients advance their cybersecurity stance. And that’s good for everybody — companies, insurance providers, and IT providers too.

In the event of an incident, typically, the first call is to us. We’ll jump in and see what’s going on, and if we identify a breach, or there’s an ongoing breach, we reach out to the cyber insurance organization and they send in their incident response team.

CopperTree’s role in the whole process is coordinating between the client and the cybersecurity incident response team. We give them access to the things they need access to and answer any infrastructure questions. Because we’re there all day, every day, and we know what we’re dealing with, we have all the information that they might need and figure out what happened.

CopperTree is the IT department for our clients, and as such, we are the key point of contact for the cyber insurance incident response team. We pass along any information they need. If they need access to different systems, we coordinate that. Our goal is to give them whatever they need and help them to figure out what happened and how we’re gonna move forward from here.

Final Thoughts

Business leaders tell us often that they just want to be able to sleep at night knowing that their risks are managed and their systems are secure. And cyber insurance is just one of the things that any organization can implement for that purpose.

Cyber insurance is part of a broader spectrum of solutions that should be in place. It’s another layer of security that gives you a path to stability. If and when there is a problem, you’ll have a way to get back up and running. You know what’s going to happen and your risks are minimized. Most importantly, there’s a team of professionals that are ready to assist in that situation.

Are you interested in protecting your business with managed IT and cyber insurance? Learn more about our emergency IT support services. Or click here to contact us so you can learn more!