Property and Casualty (P&C) insurance tends to be one of the most important items that businesses review on an annual basis. At Scott, our clients often ask us to predict how their insurance costs will change each year. While no two businesses are exactly alike and many factors go into the pricing of insurance policies, we can make a number of predictions based on the current state of the insurance market.
When a technology company was hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by a hacker who had gained control of one of its critical control panels, it was asked to be paid in exchange for returning control to its operations. The company chose not to comply with the extortionists and instead worked to recover its account by changing passwords. Unfortunately, the hackers had created backup logins to the panel and started randomly deleting files once they saw the company’s actions. This example of cyber extortion, unfortunately, put the company out of business.
Extortion as a result of a cyber attack is becoming more and more common for all business types and sizes. One reason for the increase in incidents is that end-user software like Cryptolocker has commoditized the malware industry, making it accessible to a wider variety of criminals and less-skilled hackers.
Cyber criminals, for the purposes of extortion, can threaten to shut down computer systems or erase data, infect a company with a virus, publish private information or personally identifiable information on customers or employees, institute a denial-of-service attack or take over social media accounts.
OSHA has issued its final rule on Walking-Working Surfaces and Personal Fall Protection Systems to better protect workers in general industry from slip, trip and fall hazards. The final rule updates and clarifies standards and adds training and inspection requirements. The final rule became effective on January 17, 2017; however, OSHA is allowing delayed or phased-in compliance dates for several requirements in the final rule. States with OSHA-approved state plans have six months to adopt standards that are at least as effective as Federal OSHA standards. Many state plans adopt standards identical to OSHA, but some state plans may have different or more stringent requirements.
Each year, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) releases a list of their “Most Wanted” safety improvements. The 2017-18 list includes several recommended improvements that are directly related to the work of petroleum marketers.
In my experience working with multiple petroleum marketers, I have seen the negative business impacts that a work-related accident or injury can create. Implementing these recommendations from the NTSB can improve your risk performance and, ultimately, your bottom line.
Natural disasters can come in many forms, with the most common being related to windstorms, fires and flooding. More tornadoes occur in the United States than in any other part of the world. While large-scale disasters capture media attention, disasters can also be local in nature, such as electrical blackouts from lightning strikes or a vehicle collision with a power line. Such events can cause significant disruption to your operations.
With proper planning, downtime and loss of revenue can be kept to a minimum and operations quickly restored. A formal disaster recovery plan is critical to ensure continual operations for your business, and should incorporate the following elements: