At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers moved quickly to develop and implement remote work-from-home protocols to protect employees. Almost a year since it all began, employers are starting to develop return to work plans.

Week after week, hackers and cybercriminals launch new phishing campaigns, develop creative digital extortion threats, and expand scams with the potential to negatively impact business operations in a big way. Cyberattacks can halt online operations in only minutes and take weeks to resolve. In addition, a cyberattack that involves the loss of customer data can result in expensive litigation that seriously impacts a company’s bottom line.

Wage and Hour (W&H) exposure is an often misunderstood and frequently underinsured risk. It is commonly — and incorrectly — assumed that W&H claims are restricted to either misclassification of exempt/nonexempt employment status or failure to pay overtime. However, W&H liability also includes allegations such as underpayment of overtime, miscalculation of wages, refusal to allow employee breaks, expecting off-the-clock work, not paying employees regularly, refusal to pay exempt employees for absences, not paying for time required to put on or remove protective gear or clothing, and only adhering to federal minimum wage guidelines when state guidelines warrant higher pay.

Employers of every size have some level of liability exposure around employment practices, and those exposures seem to be growing as a result of the changing social and cultural landscape of the modern workplace. Research indicates that as of 2017, employment lawsuits had increased by more than 400% since 1997.

Internet-based crime shows no sign of letting up. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2019 saw both the highest number of cybercrime complaints and the biggest monetary losses reported since the center’s establishment in 2000. The FBI received an average of almost 1,300 complaints each day and documented more than $3.5 billion in losses for individual and business victims.