As we outlined within various news agencies last week, Intel Corp, and other leading chips manufacturers confirmed that owing a ‘fundamental design flaw’ within their chips a feature makes them vulnerable to being hacked and therefore allowing sensitive data to be accessed and stolen by hackers.

According to a release from Emergence Insurance (specialist Cyber Insurers) “there is rising global speculation about the severity of the issue – including potential performance impacts on servers and public cloud environments”.

The initial obvious concern is that businesses may have been hacked without knowing and that their current security passwords /settings /protocols etc already have been by-passed. From our understanding the chip manufacturers are working on solutions and updates to eradicate the issue and users should consider activating updates which come from the manufacturers as soon as they are received. In the meantime then data security procedures should be reviewed and data checked for accuracy where possible.

The above is brought into focus more by the fact that come 22nd February many Australian businesses will be subject to the new Notifiable Data Breach Scheme. The scheme requires businesses to advise their customers if they have suffered an eligible breach.

Cyber Risk to businesses, regardless of size, is something which most businesses are going to have to contend with more and more over the coming years. Cyber Insurance policies can be purchased which have in place provisions for a business to claim in the event which they are hacked. If this is something which you would like to know more about then please feel free to contact Colne Risk Advisory on 1300 395 755 to discuss.