If your business is targeted, how will you recover?

Think about your business for a moment.

Maybe you have a standard office set-up. A modest number of employees. A solid IT person – perhaps even a team. You have a website, of course, and a pretty impressive customer following in your region. But you certainly aren’t a national bank or a global technology giant, so you don’t consider yourself to be a target for cyber criminals.

Stories in the media about cyber attacks tend to focus on huge corporations, but smaller businesses are just as much at risk.

New cyber security trends are constantly emerging. And while common threats like ransomware attacks and phishing scams aren’t exactly new, they are becoming more sophisticated and widespread.

Think about your business again.

Do your employees use computers and smartphones? How many online transactions – business-related and personal – do you suppose take place every day within your company and on the electronic devices connected to it? With the line between personal and business activity blurring, cyber criminals are able to target us in ways that appear more professional and authentic than ever before.

The reality for small businesses is that they generally don’t have resources at their disposal to fix a breach, and recovery can be a painfully long and expensive process.

At least your private customer data is “locked down” … right?

If you’ve taken precautions to protect your customer information, that’s great. The threat of compromised customer data is still very real.

While there was a time when privacy was the main concern, there are new consequences today to consider. For example, do you sell anything online? If you experience an attack, how long can your online store be out of service before the loss of revenue becomes a significant problem for your business?

There are also new threats in sectors like manufacturing. Higher levels of technology are used throughout facilities that didn’t exist even a decade ago, and criminals are infiltrating these systems too.

But no matter what industry you’re in, consider this: word gets around quickly in today’s climate of social media use. Public chatter about a business being compromised can result in long-term reputation damage. It’s hard to put a dollar amount on “fixing” a tarnished brand, and even the most skilled IT team is helpless to recover a company’s reputation.

Your business is worth it.

We know how overwhelming it is to try and keep up with cyber trends and stay aware of new threats – especially while running a business. However, the health of your business is worth the effort to partner with experts who will implement systems and processes to protect you against the cyber threats of today, and for what’s coming.

Wawanesa’s independent brokers have the knowledge and experience to assess your business, provide guidance for how to avoid attacks, and ensure the most appropriate coverage is in place so if a cyber attack happens to you, you’ll be protected.

LEARN MORE ABOUT WAWANESA’S CYBER PROTECTION