Your company has developed a website and conducts business online. Your information technology department has taken the usual security precautions, and ensures you have the fastest website available, but is your site secure? Many business owners have a website, but many do not update their websites or regularly check for security risks or vulnerabilities.

If you operate a commercial website, there’s a good chance your site has security vulnerabilities. Internet commerce, in particular, has put new demands on technology or risk management departments and created new loss exposures for many businesses. If your company plans to provide services or sell products online, system downtime can result in significant losses in revenue.

Even if your company does not sell online, unauthorized access to internal data can be a severe threat. Even the biggest multi-national corporations have experienced data breaches, so any business is a potential target. Corrupted data can hurt your business, and the unauthorized release of customer information can mean liability issues.

How Can Companies Manage Website Risks?

The best approach is to conduct a risk management analysis of your website and online systems. A risk analysis can help:

• Identify security issues
• Ensure disclosures, copyright and privacy issues are not overlooked
• Ensure E-Commerce is secure
• Ensure privacy policies are clearly stated
• All website links are accurate and secure
• Graphics and messaging are relevant, on-brand and appealing

Beyond the obvious benefit of making sure a website is protected to potential hacking and information theft, risk analysis provides long-range planning guidance concerning hardware configuration, software systems, and internal controls. It can also make valuable contributions to the criteria for contingency and security plans for the organization.

Even when businesses take the proper precautions to protect their website and sensitive data, they need to make sure their insurance protects their business if something does go wrong. Do you have Cyber Insurance? Cyber Insurance is a relatively new insurance product designed to provide businesses with peace­ of ­mind as they do business in today’s online environment.

The complete cyber insurance package includes a legal liability component with protection against lawsuits stemming from a data breach, as well as a business interruption component, which compensates lost revenue resulting from downtime from a data breach. Finally, there is coverage for breach notification costs, which, depending on the size of your customer database, can be considerable.

Ensure your website is protected. Download our free Website Risk Exposure checklist to examine issues that should be reviewed when auditing your company's website.