If you think you can ignore the risk of your business being hit by cybercrime, you are mistaken. This growth area of criminal activity is bringing huge financial losses and reputational damage to small and medium-sized business across Australia.
The people responsible for cybercrime are smart, highly organised and don’t care who they hurt. Every business in every industry is at risk - and plumbing contracting businesses are no exception.
You might think these are unnecessarily alarming statements and you have nothing to fear. Please reconsider, because you owe it to yourself, your employees and your family to understand what cybercrime can do to a small or medium business.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre website says, "In the 2022-23 financial year, the average cost of cybercrime for small business increased to $46,000, and for medium businesses, it increased to $97,000."
Overseas research has found that more than half of small businesses close within six months of experiencing a cyber attack.
Simply being connected to the internet puts you at risk
The Australian Federal Police website provides the following definition of cybercrime.
"In Australia, the term 'cybercrime' is used to describe
- crimes directed at computers or other information communications technologies (ICTs), such as computer intrusions and denial of service attacks
- crimes where computers or ICTs are an integral part of an offence, such as online fraud."
In other words, if you use computers and are connected to the internet, you are a potential cybercrime target.
The risk is as real as the risk of property theft from your business premises or work site. To make matters worse, it can happen without you knowing about it.
What cybercrime will do to your business
Cybercrimes take various forms, for example
- stealing customers’ details from databases
- accessing saved passwords and credit card details to enable fraudulent transactions
- diverting payments by sending false invoices to customers
- lodging false tax returns and claiming illegal refunds
- hacking into social media accounts
The damage inflicted by one cybercrime can have multiple devastating outcomes, such as
- direct monetary loss
- reputational damage
- customers and suppliers losing trust
- costs of communicating to customers and suppliers
- time and cost to investigate the incident
- time and cost to restore IT systems
Considering the potential scale of losses and the fact that recovery time may run into days or weeks, it’s little wonder many businesses don’t survive.
How to protect your business
The first line of defence is to make sure you follow all the basic precautions such as keeping your software up to date, not sharing passwords, using multi-factor authentication, ensuring your servers and your website’s content management system are secure and keeping back-ups of your data.
Unfortunately, you can take every possible precaution and still be vulnerable.
That’s because cybercriminals are professional operators whose business models are based on using technology to steal and deceive. Sadly, they are extremely good at it.
That’s why you need a second line of defence. This is where cyber insurance comes in.
A cyber insurance policy will help you mitigate the costs that occur when your business is the victim of a cybercrime. It could make the difference between staying afloat and going under.
Talk to MPA Insurance about cyber insurance
MPA Insurance is the specialist insurance broking service for members of The Master Plumbers and Gasfitters Association of WA.
They understand the requirements of plumbing and gasfitting businesses, provide sound advice and work hard to obtain highly competitive quotes from a range of insurance companies.
To take the first step towards getting your second line of defence against cybercrime, talk to MPA Insurance as soon as possible. You may contact them on (08) 6141 3189 or info@mpaib.com.au for an obligation-free consultation.
If you're not a member and want to use our MPA Insurance service, sign up now.
