Is Cyber Incident Response better than Risk Insurance?

Cyberattacks are continuously evolving. They are rising exponentially and affecting businesses and users as never before. From the network infrastructure to sensitive data and applications, nothing is safe from the reach of cybercriminals. Large corporations, government agencies, as well as SMEs are struggling to protect their critical infrastructure from the wrath of threat actors. To successfully fight against cybercriminals, enterprises need a reliable solution that can save them from losing customer trust, dropping of stock value, disrupted business operations, bad impact on brand integrity, and guaranteed financial loss.

In the wake of hundreds of security breaches, organizations are stepping up their game with skilled security professionals. But cyberattacks being inevitable, businesses need a backup plan – cybersecurity insurance. It indeed offers protection from financial losses that occurred due to data breaches, including the provision of services like security audits, customer credit monitoring services, and legal expenses. Yet, it is incapable of covering the reputational loss. Interestingly, the incident response process is designed to safeguard not only a firm’s potential revenue, but also its sensitive data, reputation, and customer trust.

Here are a few pointers to help you decide which of the two is right for your organization.

Cybersecurity Risk Insurance Vs. Incident Response Team 

Cyber insurance provides coverage for – business liabilities for a data breach, remediation costs while responding to cyberattacks, and legal proceedings. After analyzing the size and scope of frequent security incidents, enterprises start adopting cyber insurance as a part of their risk management strategy. Besides all the benefits of cybersecurity risk insurance, it can’t replace the need for data security and protection.

On the other hand, if the reputation, revenue, and customer trust of the organization are at stake due to destructive security events, firms should build a robust incident response plan and hire a dedicated team to execute it. These professionals work to detect, respond, recover from the consequences of security incidents. They follow a procedure with six major phases – Preparation, Identification, Containment, Eradication, Recovery, and Lessons Learned to handle the incident. 

An incident response team can defend the organization from the dramatic effects of a security breach. At the same time, cyber insurance majorly focuses on recovering the financial losses the firm faced after hitting by the breach. Even adopting a combination of both will strengthen the defense system of the organization. But for that, the firm needs professionals with relevant hands-on experience.

Source: eccouncil.org