Moving to the cloud seems like a harmless thing to do. After all, a service named after white, fluffy, peaceful things can't be bad. Or can it? There's a new crop of insurance woes popping up surrounding cloud usage. If you're thinking about a move to the cloud, you might need to check your business insurance policy first.
Third-Party and First-Party Risks
Venture Beat describes the potential risks of moving to the cloud here. A First-party cloud risk directly pertains to cloud outages. When the cloud goes down, so does your business. In turn, this means that you will lose clients and, potentially, money while you can't access the cloud.
Third-party risks involve other people people who might sue your company for a cloud data breach. That's right, you could be sued if your cloud data has been hacked. Further, you might be violating some governmental laws that you didn't even know about. And guess what? You're liable. Add payments accepted through websites to the mix, and you've got a lot of potential disasters on your hands.
Got Cyber Insurance?
Do you have cyber insurance? No? This is a policy that you may want to think carefully about obtaining if you plan to use the cloud at all (or the Internet, for that matter). The thing is that your current insurance provider might not cover cyber mishaps, so check your policy carefully. If you aren't sure, or don't see this type of coverage, find an insurance company that provides this specific type of cyber insurance.
Making sure that a cyber insurance policy covers all the right things is another matter. It's important to find a policy that covers your company in every territory, in every instance, and in most situations. For some good details about what to look for in a cyber insurance policy, visit the article link above.
How Worried Should You Be?
If you're not selling anything through your site, you can worry a bit less than most. If you are selling goods (any kind of goods), you'll want to make sure that your cyber insurance is in good order. The fact of the matter is that Internet law is different and the Internet is fast paced.
It's important to keep up with current trends like cloud computing, especially if you plan on taking advantage of these trends. Moving to the cloud can definitely benefit your company by saving you the costs associated with hiring a tech department. But, you have to make sure your business is covered. Otherwise, you could end up in murky water that's nothing like that pretty and fluffy cloud.
