Privacy & Your Business

Did You Know: 75% of organizations are not prepared to respond to a cyber attack but would be responsible if information was compromised.

In 2013, every Yahoo! email, Tumblr, Fantasy and Flickr accounts were hacked. Names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays and in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted passwords and security questions from over 3 billion accounts were breached by cyber attackers. At the time, Yahoo! reported the hack to be much smaller than what has been recently uncovered and announced (October 2017).

The list goes on and there was a 65% increase in security incidents from 2014 to 2015 alone. Hackers recently exposed over 30 million records from Ashley Madison, an online dating site. Over 2000 General Motors Finance customers were ‘inappropriately accessed’ by a former employee and, closer to home, an electronic file containing the names of 285 families involved with Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville was made available on Facebook.

If it can happen to them, it can happen to you! Those breaches are epic and historic cyber attacks that continue to have a negative impact on reputations and bottom lines. Hacks like these greatly reduce the public’s trust and loyalty of users and customers.

We all know that technology is everywhere, and that our daily lives are saturated with the need to be connected with technology 24/7. We expect it. We demand it. But technology is changing so fast it is becoming increasingly more difficult to keep up. And even our individual online presences are changing; did you know that the average person has 26 online accounts with an average of only 5 passwords to protect those accounts?

We all feel so safe in our internet bubble and many of us don’t even think about it, but are you really prepared? No? Well, you aren’t alone. 75% of organizations are not prepared to respond to a cyber attack, and 58% of boards are not actively preparing for a cyber incident. You should know that as a business, you are responsible for the safekeeping of your customer’s personal information and you must notify your customers of possible and known privacy breaches where their personal information may have been compromised. It can occur within a business, or off-site; it can be the result of inadvertent errors or malicious actions by employees, third parties, business partners or intruders. It can also happen by accident. Think about this: have you ever sent an email to the wrong person or included an attachment that shouldn’t have been included? It’s really that easy to inadvertently breach your data. The cost to your business could easily reach the 100’s of thousands of dollars, or even more in potential litigation and lost revenue.

Many insurance companies can endorse your commercial policy with varying limits, but not all policy add-ons are created equal. Palladium Insurance recommends Cyber Liability Policies, which are designed to protect against first and third party losses. This separate policy offers the best protection for your company’s financial data and your client’s private information. Palladium’s plans are so flexible, small businesses can benefit from the same protection as larger ones!