Nationwide — A Helpful Warning to Your Small Business Clients

Nationwide just completed a survey of small businesses and cyberattacks. What it found is recovery costs far exceeding what a small business owner believes a final cost will tally.

Most — 65% — think the cost of a cyber-attack will be about $5,000 or less. And 20% of those businesses think they’ll have everything fixed and recovered within a month. A frightening 60% of those surveyed think the non-cyber insurance they carry will take care of the costs of recovery from a ransomware attack, a breach or other types of attacks.

Sadly, just 42% of those surveyed have cyber insurance.

Nationwide’s claims data says these small businesses will be in for a big surprise if they get attacked. The average cost of an attack is $18,000 to $21,000 and recovery from that attack can run 75 days or more.

Here’s more from the survey:

• 26% said they’ve been targeted by scams driven by AI
• Those attacks used email and/or voice and video impersonations of senior-level employees
• 52% of those owners say they have been fooled by deepfake images or videos in the past year
• 90% of those surveyed want more support to protect them from these very sophisticated attacks

Don Snizaski runs a cyber protection company, Life and Safety Consultants. He said in many ways small businesses are more vulnerable than big companies with bigger budgets and more security staff.

However, he said, overall, small businesses are less likely to fall for a cyber-attack.

"Smaller companies are also agile and able to respond to potential threats almost immediately by communicating directly with their employees and taking any necessary corrective action," Snizaski said. "Another reason we are less likely to be attacked is that we are small and the 'juice isn't worth the squeeze' so to speak.”

That good news is fortified by Nationwide’s survey.

• 69% of small business owners worry about an attack on their business
• However, 65% say they’re prepared to prevent an attack
• 71% of small business owners do cybersecurity training with their employees at least once a year
• 36% say they send phishing test emails to their employees every couple of months to keep them prepared

Source link: PropertyCasualty360.com — https://bit.ly/4hEhXjR