Created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance, National Cyber Security Awareness Month was created to help increase awareness about cyber threats and security measures.

Do you bank electronically?

What happens if you log on one day and $100,000 is missing from your account? You contact your bank. What do THEY say? Likely some version of “Not our fault, we received all the correct protocols to allow that transfer to happen.” Insurers offer crime policies to help with just such fraudulent electronic transfer exposures. With the recent announcement of the hacking of Equifax, this should be even more on your mind, both because, well, if it can happen to Equifax it can happen to you, and because you can be pretty sure that some of your confidential information is now floating around in cyberspace.

The latest twist? A type of “spoofing” called social engineering, in which a hacker pretends to be someone inside your firm, and tells you to wire money to pay an invoice. A New York firm called Medidata suffered a $4.8 million loss when someone in the firm transferred that money based on email instructions that falsely appeared to be from the President of the company. Think it can’t happen to you? One of our clients was stung by a similar trick and transferred $45,000 to a bogus company.

Now is the time to talk with your insurance professional about cyber insurance, before something like this happens.

This type of coverage is designed to mitigate losses from a variety of cyber incidents, such as data breaches, infringement of copyright, and network damage. As technology becomes more complex and sophisticated, so do the threats we face, which is why more and more businesses are becoming prepared with cyber liability insurance. It’s not a matter of if you will get hacked, but when.