When cyber and D&O insurance premiums soared, businesses may have felt it necessary to reduce coverage. Now, rates have declined, so it may be a good time to “top off” your cyber and D&O limits – especially because, unlike premiums, risks are not falling. Cyber and D&O Premium Trends Both cyber and D&O insurance have seen substantial swings in recent years. Cyber insurance premiums skyrocketed between 2020 and 2022. According to CIAB, rates were up 34.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021. After that, rate hikes began to moderate, although double-digit increases were still the norm for a while. By the second half of 2023, rate hikes were only up 3.6%. In the second quarter of 2024, CIAB says rates were actually down 1.7%. D&O insurance has shown a similar pattern. Rate increases started to climb around 2019 and 2020. CIAB says D&O insurance rates were up 16.8% in the second quarter of 2020 and 16.1% in the third quarter. However, the hard market di

Small businesses are increasingly becoming the target of cyber-attacks; 71% of such incidents involve organizations with fewer than 100 employees. With each attack costing an average $500,000 to fix, it’s an expensive price to pay for being unprotected against cyber threats. More and more businesses are finding out the hard way just how important cyber security is; at Brandt Insurance & Financial, we have the products in place to protect your business in the event you fall victim to an online attack. As the threats become more advanced, the more far-reaching your security coverage needs to be. If you want to make sure your small business is protected, follow our five steps to improving your cyber security and safeguarding your livelihood. Eliminate unnecessary data Many cyber-attacks are orchestrated with the goal of stealing sensitive information, either about your company or your customers. To reduce the risk to your business and your clients, permanently eliminate any u

With the recent surge in direct-to-consumer (DTC) wine commerce, the importance of beefing up online security has grown significantly. Unfortunately, ecommerce sites, hubs for processing payments and gathering personal information, attract hackers' attention. There have been several high-profile data breaches in recent years, and a concerning report even indicates that 29% of ecommerce website traffic aims at malicious activities. As hackers continually advance their techniques/methods, safeguarding your winery's website becomes increasingly critical. In this blog, we will delve into four essential online security features that your winery should know about and consider adopting to ensure the safety of your business and your customers' data.  👉 Learn the 4 Important Online Security Features to Protect Your Winery

As hectic as peak can be, the holiday season can be a great opportunity to boost your winery’s customer acquisition and sales. Here’s how to do it. The following tips come from a collaborative webinar with Holly Berrigan, Chief Revenue Officer at Studio Beverage Group. You can watch the full webinar recording here. With peak in full swing and the holidays just around the corner, wineries around the nation are scrambling to keep up with fast-paced winter sales. But, as crazy as the holiday season can be, it also offers a multitude of new opportunities for growth. During this period, wineries who craft effective seasonal sales offers can expect significant boosts in customer acquisition, click-through rates, conversion rates, customer retention, and revenue. As a winery, the success of your winery’s offer depends on your ability to craft a promotion that resonates with your audience while also meeting the criteria of a “blowout” deal for your brand. Thi

Increase in competition for consumer products—from wine, craft beer, and spirits to supplements and cannabis products—is making a product’s label ever-more important to helping it stand out and prevent copycats.  Premium brands need to look great on shelves (and online) and help assure customers that they’re purchasing the real deal. Achieving this with your packaging while also making it stand out from the crowd means you need to add extra creativity. Holographic labels might be just the fine touch you were looking for. WHAT ARE HOLOGRAPHIC LABELS? Holographic labels, holograms, or holographic stickers are labels that can be infused with 2D or 3D images. Creating these effects is a highly technical process: you need to duplicate and engrave the image with a laser beam on the sticker surface. Typically, that surface is a foil or modified paper. You can add any design to your holographic label: numbers, images, texts, logos, photographs, and more.  If y

The federal government has warned that a newly discovered computer software vulnerability poses a major threat to the security of computer networks around the country. Cybercriminals are exploiting holes in open-source code software commonly used in computer applications, websites, and cloud services. This can allow cybercriminals to seize control of a business’s computer network if preventative measures are not taken. This is not a threat that businesses should take lightly as it could cripple your organization if your network is affected. If your firm is large enough to have dedicated IT staff, it should be their immediate focus. The Danger of the Log4j Vulnerability The vulnerability lies in the Log4j software library, written in the Java programming language and created by the Apache Software Foundation. Many software vendors incorporate the Log4j software library into products such as websites, applications, and cloud services to record network security and performance info

What's New with the Wine Industry’s Leading DTC Solution? WineDirect has announced that they are building the All-New WineDirect platform. But what does this really mean? WineDirect is currently the only complete end-to-end solution serving the wine industry, providing wineries of all shapes and sizes everything they need to develop and manage a successful direct-to-consumer (DTC) program. This includes wine clubs, point-of-sale, ecommerce, and best-in-class fulfillment capabilities. The All New WineDirect interface  “As stated in our 2021 Direct-to-Consumer Impact Report, the past few years have proven the growing importance of DTC channels to wineries. The industry has experienced exponential growth even in the face of rapidly changing and challenging market conditions,” says Andrea Smalling, Chief Marketing Officer at WineDirect. “We’ve worked tirelessly to ensure that wineries have the all the tools needed to drive sales in this new environme

THURSDAY, MAY 06 TRENDING STORY   Cyber Security Experts Warn Over Online Wine Scams Scammers have increasingly used wine-themed domain names to target potential victims during parts of the Covid-19 lockdown, a recent cyber security report has suggested…   TODAY’S NEWS   Battlelines of the Eastern Front of the War on the Spotted Lanternfly Seven […] The post Afternoon Brief, May 6th appeared first on Wine Industry Advisor. Url:https://wineindustryadvisor.com/2021/05/06/afternoon-brief-1859?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=afternoon-brief-1859 Published Date:Thu, 06 May 2021 22:04:09 +0000 

Controls Engineering Manager Rolando Bonilla from our Chicago office on earning his ISA Cybersecurity Fundamentals Specialist certificate.

As more of America’s workers were asked to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber criminals jumped at the opportunity to take advantage, it seems. Remote work means work being handled on the cloud as employees share files and need a convenient way to access them. But cyber criminals are banking on workers letting down their guards when they work from home, so it’s no surprise that while cloud service usage among enterprises jumped 50% between January and April, external attacks on cloud accounts boomed 630% in the same period. Also, hackers and other cyber scammers orchestrated systematic attacks on collaboration tools like Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack, according to the “Cloud Adoption & Risk Report – Work from Home Edition” report by McAfee. The risk to enterprises cannot be overstated as criminals try to take advantage of the sudden shift to telecommuting by thousands and thousands of organizations as they try to cope wit