Effective Cybersecurity Requires Both Cyber Training & Insurance Cover

The amount of data stored on-line in the US doubles just about every year, making ever more trade secrets, personal and confidential business data potentially exposed to hacking and theft. 

Effective cybersecurity training for staff and management often does not take place often enough to keep employees up-dated with the current scams and hacks. Cyber insurance has been operating in this area for some time but the commercial industry has not taken the threats seriously and often does not take adequate cyber insurance. 

Only around 15% of large US companies have adequate cyber insurance and only 5% of small and medium sized business have coverage. Cyber-attacks on commerce has increased and cybercrime in the US is now costing almost $158B every year in North America. 

The same issues and lack of insurance cover is also affecting the EU. Some of the cyber insurance cover businesses we spoke with recently have said the problem has not been properly dealt with by most companies in the UK where over 50% of national crime is now cyber related and is costing the UK economy around £30B. 

Often the IT department management will tell their board that they have very adequate cyber systems protection and that their firewalls are very effective. Yet often this not the case and time and again hackers find ways to penetrate IT systems and steal data information and money. 

The reason the IT department say this is because they do not want to appear IT weak and often they have not had an independent IT audit and therefore they do not have a complete understanding of the cyber risks involved. Often old systems are still connected to the current more un-dated systems and this means that hackers can find a way into the whole system and add malware or steal data and cash.

A defensive attitude from IT leaders does not in any case protect organisations against insider threats.

Cyber audits should become something that is legally binding similar to financial audits which once they were legally employed this reduced the financial crime rate. Furthermore, most companies do not have adequate cyber training for its employees and senior management. 

Adequate professionally- conducted cyber training greatly reduces the likelihood of phishing emails getting into the system and allowing hackers to get the data and information they require for a successful cyber-attack.

For more information: please contact Cyber Security Intelligence.

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