In the current digital environment, where cyberthreats are commonplace, it makes perfect sense to have cyber liability insurance. However, just having a policy in place doesn’t guarantee a smooth claims process.
Cyber insurance policies come with varying terms and coverage, requiring meticulous examination of inclusions and exclusions and deciphering technical jargon. Having a thorough understanding of your policy sets realistic expectations and prepares you to handle potential cyber incidents with confidence.
This blog aims to help you get the most out of your cyber liability insurance. Keep reading to learn more.
Mastering Your Cyber Insurance Claims
Here are some key steps to optimize your coverage:
Thorough Policy Understanding
Delve into the nuances of your policy. Scrutinize terms, conditions and coverage limits. Identifying inclusions and exclusions aligns your expectations effectively, empowering you to grasp the extent of protection offered.
Precision in Application
Accuracy is paramount when applying for cyber insurance. Detailed and precise information regarding your organization’s cybersecurity measures, risk management practices and past incidents or breaches aids insurers in evaluating your risk profile accurately.
Documentation of Security Measures
Maintaining comprehensive records of cybersecurity measures, policies, procedures and incident responses becomes crucial evidence during the claims process. These records showcase proactive steps taken to mitigate cyber-risks.
Timely Incident Reporting
Immediate reporting of cyber incidents or potential claims to your insurer as per policy requirements is essential. Swift notification initiates the claims early, allowing for a prompt investigation — a critical aspect of a successful claims process.
Detailed Loss Documentation
Comprehensive documentation and quantification of financial losses incurred due to cyber incidents are vital. Including costs related to business interruption, data restoration, legal fees and other expenses supports your claim’s accuracy.
Cooperation with the Insurer’s Investigations
Full cooperation with the insurer’s investigation, providing requested information, interviews and access to systems and records, is imperative. Failure to cooperate might lead to claim delays or denials.
Regular Policy Review
Consistent review of your cyber insurance policy is crucial. Align it with evolving business needs and changing cyber risk landscapes. This step allows necessary adjustments to coverage, endorsements or additional coverages matching your risk profile.
Enhancing Cybersecurity Practices
Continuously improve cybersecurity measures based on industry standards. Regular assessments to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities showcase a proactive approach, potentially influencing positive claim outcomes.
Databranch stresses the importance of conducting vulnerability assessments regularly, at least every quarter if not more frequently. This is due to the dynamic nature of information technology. Many changes occur on a day-to-day basis that can introduce new exposures associated with information security.
Security shortcomings found during a vulnerability assessment can almost always be fixed. Many times, the fixes are very easy to accomplish.
Expert Consultation
Seeking guidance from insurance professionals, legal counsel and specialized IT service providers offers invaluable insights. Their advice aids in optimizing coverage and effectively navigating the claims process.
Databranch can help your business implement many of the pre-requisites for a cyber insurance policy, such as performing vulnerability assessments, enabling MFA, restricting administrative privileges, and even installing a data backup and recovery solution.
Ensuring a Successful Payout
While obtaining cyber insurance is vital, maneuvering the claims process for a successful payout is equally essential. Our seasoned experts specialize in cyber insurance claims and understand policy nuances and claim procedures.
With extensive experience, we’ve successfully guided numerous businesses through complexities, offering tailored strategies to enhance claim success. Reach out to Databranch today at 716-373-4467 option 6, or [email protected] to schedule a no-obligation consultation to optimize your cyber insurance coverage and fortify your business against cyber incidents effectively.
Download our infographic today for more information on cyber insurance claims and why yours may be denied.
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The need to back up data has been around since floppy disks. Data loss happens due to viruses, hard drive crashes, and other mishaps. Most people using any type of technology have experienced data loss at least once.
There are about 140,000 hard drive crashes in the US weekly. Every five years, 20% of SMBs suffer data loss due to a major disaster. How would you business be effected if you lost most of your critical business data? Visit our website here to set your Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and calculate your recovery cost.
This increate in data loss has helped to drive a robust cloud backup market that continues to grow.
But one thing that’s changed with data backup in the last few years is security. Simply backing up data so you don’t lose it, isn’t enough anymore. Backing up has morphed into data protection.
What does this mean?
It means that backups need more cybersecurity protection. They face threats such as sleeper ransomware and supply chain attacks. Cloud-based backup has the benefit of being convenient, accessible, and effective. But there is also a need for certain security considerations with an online service.
Companies need to consider data protection when planning a backup and recovery strategy. The security tools used nowadays have to protect against the growing number of threats.
Some of the modern threats to data backups include:
- Data Center Outage: The “cloud” basically means data on a server. That server is internet accessible. Those servers can crash. Data centers holding the servers can also have outages.
- Sleeper Ransomware: This type of ransomware stays silent after infecting a device. The goal is to have it infect all backups. Then, when it’s activated, the victim doesn’t have a clean backup to restore.
- Supply Chain Attacks: Supply chain attacks have been growing. They include attacks on cloud vendors that companies use. Those vendors suffer a cyberattack that then spreads throughout their clients.
- Misconfiguration: Misconfiguration of security settings can be a problem. It can allow attackers to gain access to cloud storage. Those attackers can then download and delete files as they like. Visit our website here to read more about the Misconfiguration of Cloud Applications.
What to Look for in a Data Protection Backup System
Just backing up data isn’t enough. You need to make sure the application you use provides adequate data protection. Here are some of the things to look for when reviewing a backup solution.
Ransomware Prevention
Ransomware can spread throughout a network to infect any data that exists. This includes data on computers, servers, and mobile devices. It also includes data in cloud platforms syncing with those devices.
95% of ransomware attacks also try to infect data backup systems.
It’s important that any data backup solution you use, has protection from ransomware. This type of feature restricts automated file changes that can happen to documents.
Continuous Data Protection
Continuous data protection is a feature that will back up files as users make changes. This differs from systems that back up on a schedule, such as once per day.
Continuous data protection ensures that the system captures the latest file changes. This mitigates data loss that can occur if a system crashes before the next backup. With the speed of data generation these days, losing a day’s worth of data can be very costly.
Threat Identification
Data protection incorporates proactive measures to protect files. Look for threat identification functions in a backup service. Threat identification is a type of malware and virus prevention tool.
It looks for malware in new and existing backups. This helps stop sleeper ransomware and similar malware from infecting all backups.
Zero-Trust Tactics
Cybersecurity professionals around the world promote zero-trust security measures. This includes measures such as multi-factor authentication and application safelisting.
A zero-trust approach holds that all users and applications need ongoing authentication. So, just because a user is logged into the system today, doesn’t mean they are completely trusted.
Some of the zero-trust features to look for include:
Backup Redundancy
If you back up to a USB drive or CD, you have one copy of those files. If something happens to that copy, you could experience data loss.
Cloud backup providers should have backup redundancy in place. This means that the server holding your data mirrors that data to another server. This prevents data loss in the case of a server crash, natural disaster, or cyberattack.
At Databranch, our Datto devices utilize a reliable data backup redundancy solution by storing your critical business data onto your local Datto device as well as 2 offsite cloud storages.
Air Gapping for More Sensitive Data
Air gapping is a system that keeps a copy of your data offline or separated in another way. This would entail making a second backup copy of your data. Then, putting it on another server that is disconnected from external sources.
This is a feature that you may want to seek out if you deal with highly sensitive data. It helps to ensure that you have at least one other copy of your backup. A copy walled off from common internet-based attacks.
Need Help With Secure Backup & Data Protection Solutions?
With Datto, your company can be up and running in just seconds after a disaster. Instant virtualization combined with the ability to backup as frequently as every 5 minutes means that with the click of a button, your Datto device recreates your computers and servers so your business can resume as if nothing had ever happened.
Our Datto devices utilize a reliable data backup redundancy solution by storing your critical business data onto your local Datto device as well as 2 offsite cloud storages. Datto even includes ransomware detection by running analytics to compare the two most recent backup snapshots to identify ransomware footprints.
Have you updated your backup process for today’s threats? Contact us today at 716-373-4467 x115 or [email protected] to schedule a chat about data backup and protection.
You can also visit our website to learn more about Datto and the benefits it provides.
Article used with permission from The Technology Press.
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Misconfiguration of cloud solutions is often overlooked when companies plan cybersecurity strategies. Cloud apps are typically quick and easy to sign up for, so the user often assumes that they don’t need to worry about security because it’s handled.
This is an incorrect assumption because cloud security is a shared model. The provider of the solution handles securing the backend infrastructure but the user is responsible for configuring security settings in their account properly.
Problems with misconfiguration are the number one cause of cloud data breaches. It’s also an unforced error. Misconfiguration means that a company has made a mistake because it hasn’t adequately secured its cloud application.
Perhaps they gave too many employees administrative privileges or, they may have neglected to turn on a security function that would have prevented the downloading of cloud files by an unauthorized user.
Misconfiguration covers a wide range of negligent behavior. It all has to do with cloud security settings and practices. A finding in The State of Cloud Security 2021 shed light on how common this issue is. Around 45% of organizations experience between 1 and 50 cloud misconfigurations per day.
Some of the main causes of misconfiguration are:
- Lack of adequate oversight and controls
- A team lacking security awareness
- Too many cloud APIs to manage
- No adequate cloud environment monitoring
- Negligent insider behavior
- Not enough expertise in cloud security
Use the tips below to reduce your risk of a cloud data breach and improve cloud security.
Enable Visibility into Your Cloud Infrastructure
Do you know all the different cloud apps employees are using at your business? If not, you’re not alone. It’s estimated that shadow IT use is approximately 10x the size of known cloud use.
When an employee uses a cloud app without authorization, it’s considered “shadow IT.” This is because the app is in the shadows so to speak, outside the purview of the company’s IT team.
How can you protect something you don’t know about? This is why shadow cloud applications are so dangerous and why they often result in breaches due to misconfiguration.
Gain visibility into your entire cloud environment, so you know what you need to protect. One way you can do this is through a cloud access security application.
Restrict Privileged Accounts
The more privileged accounts you have, the higher the risk of a misconfiguration. There should be very few users that can change security configurations. You don’t want someone that doesn’t know better to accidentally open a vulnerability, such as removing a cloud storage sharing restriction. It could leave your entire environment a sitting duck for hackers.
Audit privileged accounts in all cloud tools. Then, reduce the number of administrative accounts to a least needed to operate.
Click here to learn more about the risks associated with Administrative Privileges.
Put in Place Automated Security Policies
Automation helps mitigate human error. Automating as many security policies as possible helps prevent cloud security breaches.
For example, if you use a feature like sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365, you can set a “do not copy” policy. It will follow the file through each supported cloud application. Users don’t need to do anything to enable it once you put the policy in place.
Use a Cloud Security Audit Tool (Like Microsoft Secure Score)
How secure is your cloud environment? How many misconfigurations might there be right now? It’s important to know this information so you can correct issues to reduce risk.
Use an auditing tool, like Microsoft Secure Score. You want a tool that can scan your cloud environment and let you know where problems exist. It should also be able to provide recommended remediation steps.
Set Up Alerts for When Configurations Change
Once you get your cloud security settings right, they won’t necessarily stay that way. Several things can cause a change in a security setting without you realizing it. These include:
- An employee with elevated permissions accidentally changes them
- A change caused by an integrated 3rd party plug-in
- Software updates
- A hacker that has compromised a privileged user credential
Be proactive by setting up alerts. You should have an alert for any significant change in your cloud environment. For example, when the setting to force multi-factor authentication gets turned off.
If an alert is set up, then your team knows right away when a change occurs to an important security setting. This allows them to take immediate steps to research and rectify the situation.
Have a Cloud Specialist Check Your Cloud Settings
Business owners, executives, and office managers usually are not cybersecurity experts and no one should expect them to know how to configure the best security for your organization’s needs.
It’s best to have a cloud security specialist from Databranch check your settings. Thinking about moving your applications from your local server to the cloud? We can help ensure that they’re set up to keep your data protected without restricting your team.
Improve Cloud Security & Lower Your Chances for a Data Breach
Most work is now done in the cloud, and companies store data in these online environments. Don’t leave your company at risk by neglecting to review your cloud security configuration. Contact Databranch today at 716-373-4467 x 115 or [email protected] to set up a cloud security assessment.
Article used with permission from The Technology Press.
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