In a survey conducted recently, it was found that some 56 per cent of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore have experienced a cyber-attack in the last 12 months. It was also found that 64 percent of the SMEs do not completely understand the insurance options available to protect themselves from a cyber incident.
(Source: The Business Times, 17 January 2019, Over-half-of-smes-in-singapore-have-experienced-a-cyber-error-or-attack-last-year-poll)
Did you know that nearly half of all cyber-attacks are committed against small to medium businesses?
Most of the time these are caused by simple employee mistakes like email being sent to the wrong party or opening up a phishing email that results in a breach of the company’s network, with the end result of a financial loss to the business.
Cyber-attacks hurt SMEs the most. They are most likely to suffer a reputational damage to their brand and also risk losing their business entirely due to their lack of resources to navigate out of such incidents.
It is no longer a question of whether a cyber incident will happen, but a question of when it will happen.
Cyber Security & Data Protection insurance protects you against liabilities arising from data protection laws, management of personal data and the consequences of losing information. For individuals, this includes credit card numbers, medical records, birth dates, passport numbers and other private personal information which can be stolen and used inappropriately. Equally, the loss of corporate information such as intellectual property and proprietary information could severely disadvantage a business.
With network attacks and security becoming a significant issue, Insurers can help to cover you for direct first party losses such as recovering lost or destroyed data, notification, monitoring, forensic investigation expenses, lost income, and public relations expenses.
In general, Cyber Insurance provides cover for:
- Crisis Management – Round the clock 24 x 7 x 365 access support to forensics, legal, and public relation experts with strong local and regional presence. Personal contact numbers of Underwriters, Forensics, Legal and PR Service Providers are provided to the insured.
- Business Interruption – Pays on behalf to the insured: the loss of business income, as well as extra expenses incurred to maintain operation of the business as a result of the interruption following a network attack.
- First Party Cover – Pays on behalf to the insured: Hacker Theft Loss, Network Extortion, and fees and expenses incurred by a Loss Adjustor.
- Third Party Liability – Pays on behalf to the insured: claims for compensation made by a 3rd party, liabilities imposed by a regulator, investigation cost, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) breach, consumer redress funds, and also fines and penalties.
- Additional Cover – Provides Emergency Costs, Loss Mitigation Costs, Personal Public Relations Expenses, costs incurred to restore a Network Failure. (Additional cover only given by certain Insurers.)
- Worldwide Cover – Policy coverage extends to worldwide territory and jurisdiction.
- Full Retroactive Cover – Taking care of the insured’s cyber exposures entirely since the formation of the company, excluding any known claims or circumstances. (Additional cover only given by certain Insurers.)
- Free Risk Management Services – Insurers will arrange for their expert panel to provide employees e-training on phishing, social engineering and data classification, Singapore PDPA compliance readiness consultation, as well as doing a business data breach scanner to identify if cyber criminals are actively trading your employees stolen information. (Additional cover only given by certain Insurers.)
We believe that as an organization, you are handling lots of customers’ data which are crucial to the success of your business. But that also puts you at risk should you mismanage such data. This can result in costly expenses when being investigated by the PDPC and might potentially affect your company’s cashflow. Take no chances and get protected today with Cyber Security and Data Protection Insurance.