What Your Business Needs to Know About Cybersecurity Insurance

It isn’t rare for business owners to seek out opportunities to trim expenses and cut costs wherever possible. Your security should never be someplace you look… especially if you hope to ever secure the increasingly important business insurance you need.

Now you may be saying, “But my IT is surely good enough.” Alas, that standard isn’t sufficient in the eyes of insurance providers, and as a result, it actually becomes more expensive than having the right technology protections in the first place.

Insurance Providers Don’t Want Risky Investments

The way the insurance industry works is, at its core, pretty simple: one organization promises to help a group of other entities if disaster ever strikes. To facilitate this, the organization collects a fee from this group to cover any costs necessary to recover from the aftereffects, while taking a cut to remain profitable. Naturally, for the insurance provider to make any money, they need to take in more money through these fees than the group incurs through issues.

As such, it is imperative that group members behave in ways that continue to minimize these issues. For automotive or homeowners insurance, that could be driving safely or ensuring that any changes remain within code. For business IT, it means having certain prerequisite protections in place—such as multi-factor authentication and other best practices. The insurance provider will audit any business seeking coverage to ensure these practices are in place.

If a business lacks or fails to maintain these prerequisites, the provider can and will deny them coverage.

In this way, cyber insurance boosts their protection twice over: 

• First, by providing funds to recover from a disaster.
• Second, by motivating businesses to invest in appropriate safeguards.

Potential Buyers Don’t Want Risky Investments, Either

On the topic, let’s say you somehow beat the effectively insurmountable odds and avoid a cybersecurity issue. You start looking to sell, and buyers are interested.

Interested, that is, until the audits they conduct show that you have some latent security issues. Suddenly, this technical debt cuts your asking price by a considerable percentage.

The Risk to Your Business is Even Bigger

Cyber insurance is crucial to have for a few reasons. First off, the cost-sharing aspect of it. Which sounds like a better investment to you, a few thousand in exchange for protection and peace of mind, or keeping that few thousand and very likely losing it tenfold in lost revenue and fines?

Second, the prerequisites for these policies (and to an extent, the policies themselves) are beneficial to your business’ overall reputation. By holding your business to specific standards, you help show a prospect that you take threats seriously and are working to minimize the dangers. It also doesn’t hurt that you’re doing so in a way that could help you make things right with them faster.

We’ll Help Make You an Insurance Provider’s Dream Client

The better your existing security, the better the deal an insurance provider is likely to offer you. Macro Systems can help you prove you take modern security needs seriously. Learn more by reaching out at 703-359-9211.