Do You Have Cyber Insurance on Your Self-Storage Facility?

Cyber attacks are rising every day. Ransomware attacks are growing at an alarming rate and are very difficult to recover from. You have to pay the thieves who stole your online information to get the information back in the hopes that the key they give you will work. Even if you do get the key to retrieve your information, you don’t know how much of the information they kept. In other words, your clients are at risk from that point on.

As self-storage facility owners, you collect sensitive information. You have names, addresses, and credit cards on file. While you may think that this won’t happen to you, every time that you or one of your employees goes online, you risk being hacked.

You need to have policies and procedures in place in case of a cyber attack or a breach of cyber security, but you also want to have cyber insurance in place to protect yourself.

You want to train your staff to keep their login information protected and safe. You want to make sure that they are not going to websites that may accidentally allow an attacker into your system. You want to train your employees in what to do if they suspect that someone has gotten into the system who shouldn’t have.

For your own protection, you should limit what your employees can access. The less they have access to, the less they can allow a hacker to access. Keep your sensitive information limited to administrative staff only.

In case you have an attack, you should have a cyber security vendor that you train your staff to reach out to. Always back up your data. This way if you are attacked and locked out of your system, you only lose a few hours of data, not everything.

Your technology should be up to date for many reasons. It can help you streamline your processes. In addition, you want a system with two-factor authentication. This will help with login fraud.

Sometimes, you are going to get hacked no matter how careful you and your employees are. If that happens, you want to have cyber insurance coverage. People don’t just settle for small amounts of money anymore. They go after businesses for large amounts of money when their information is compromised. You don’t want that coming out of your pocket.

Cyber insurance is not that much more expensive to add to your current insurance policy. Talk to your insurance agent and find out if you have coverage for data breaches that involve personal information. Does your coverage include cyber-attacks? These attacks can come from anywhere in the world. Does your policy defend you in a lawsuit or provide excess coverage? What additional support do they offer if you are attacked?

There are different types of coverages that you should discuss. First-party cyber coverage typically includes legal counsel, the replacement of your data, help notifying your customers and lost income from the attack in addition to several other items.

Third-party coverage protects you from liability if someone decides to bring a claim against you because of the breach. This would be from one of your renters whose information was compromised.

Cyber attacks may seem like only something that multi million dollar businesses would suffer from, but you are a business and that makes you a possible target. Make sure that you educate yourself on the risks and prepare your employees so that they keep your data safe. As always, happy investing.