What's Your Organization's Insurance for a Security Breach?

Cyber attacks are becoming an ever increasing threat and businesses of all sizes are paying a heavy price for it. Cyber crime is on top of the list for many law enforcement agencies around the world. In its most recent budget, the US Federal Government proposed to increase spending on cyber security to USD 14 Billion. Health insurers, hospitals, retailers, media companies, entertainment studios, financial institutions: no industry seems to be immune from data breaches. 

Card skimmers, Point of Sale (PoS), web application attacks, cyber espionage, crimeware, insider privilege & abuse and the list keeps getting longer by the year. Cyber threats are getting sophisticated and complex. With every passing year, cyber attacks happen at a very high frequency, using sophisticated methods, and exposing high profile targets. While in 60% of the cyber attacks, data and information was compromised within minutes, it took days or many months to contain them. And what is the cost involved as a result of these attacks? A breach involving 10 million stolen records could cost as much as USD 74 Million (Source: 2015 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report). 

With breaches continuing to expose several high profile targets, security is not anymore a topic constrained within the the Chief Information Security Officer's (CISO) organization. No CEO would want his/her organization to be making headline news because of a data breach. Board of directors in many forward thinking organizations are demanding a report on the state of organization security. And making this an agenda item in some board meetings.Its altogether a different and interesting topic on how you can prepare and report on the state of security to the board. 

Its unfortunate that many victims of cyber attacks don't find evidence that they've been breached, but find out about it from a third party. The complexity of attacks and the speed of attacks are giving organizations hardly any notice. In many cases they don't know how to respond nor do they have the in-house expertise to deal with the situation. Its not anymore a question of if someone will be a target of the next breach, but when? Given this situation, all that organizations can do is to be prepared.

In a world with exponential increase in cyber crimes, constrained IT budgets, ever increasing list of program priorities, and hard to find quality security talent, its unreasonable to expect sophisticated preparedness in house to deal with a potential breach. This is where you can get the much needed insurance coverage from a strategic security solutions partner like Verizon to deal with an eventuality. 

The Verizon Rapid Response Retainer (RRR) program is designed to help organizations immediately respond to an event, provide on-demand high quality security expertise when needed the most and have at your disposal Digital Forensics, Incidence Response & IT Investigations expertise. Its available 24*7, 365 days in a year, around the globe and in many different languages. All Verizon RRR customers get access to phone response within 3 hours of a reported event to help provide expert remote advice, remote assistance, directions for triage and evidence management. With more than 100 expert investigators around the world, Verizon RRR customers also have access to boots on the ground consulting within 24-48 hours around most parts of the globe. 

With a significant portion of the worlds internet traffic passing through our global IP network, Verizon is placed in a very unique position of understanding the cyber attack patterns and dynamics on a daily basis. We investigated in depth more than 400+ data breaches in the year 2014. 

So what is your insurance coverage to deal with a cyber attack? And how are you planning to respond to your senior management and board of directors on the question of organization readiness in case of a cyber attack? Interested in understanding more about Verizon's Rapid Response Retainer program and how we can help your organization, reach out to a security expert in Verizon Enterprise Solutions. We would be more than happy to help. 

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