Small businesses are under constant attack from cyber-crime. Our research found that as many as 1 in 3 have been victims of hacking. They’re the most vulnerable to attack, but the least likely to consider cyber insurance. They think that hackers only target big corporations and government (source: YouGov 2017, Hiscox Qualitative research group 2017).

Our challenge was to make this unseen threat more visible. To move hacking from the headlines and into their daily life, to expose the danger and highlight just how often cyber-attacks occur.

So, we created the world’s first advertising campaign to show real cyber-attacks!

Our idea was to make the threat more visible by using live cyber-attack data to show small business owners hacking as it happens, in real-time. A campaign to prove to our audience the sheer volume of attacks that occur to businesses like theirs, every minute, of every day.

Our initial investigation found that in order for our digital posters to be powered by live and accurate cyber-attack data, we would have to build our own infrastructure. Our solution was inspired by the cyber-security industry itself.

We built a honeypot.

Honeypot.

(Noun). A decoy computer system, for trapping hackers.

We setup a group of proxy servers and computers connected to the internet, built to look like a real business’s IT system. To the opportunistic cyber-criminal this looked like a real small business.

Our proprietary technology enabled us to distribute the cumulative number of attacks from our honeypot, to a network of 37 digital posters across the UK, instantaneously. The more attacks we received, the more the headline reacted, creating The Honeypot Posters - where hackers powered the headlines.

The poster network was live for one week from 19th February 2018, during busy times of day for small business owners.

In just one week our servers were attacked over 195,000 times, that’s the equivalent of 1 attack every 3 seconds!

We clearly struck a nerve with the British public and exposed the real threat to small businesses in the UK.

The campaign delivered the most successful business period for Hiscox Cyber Insurance ever. Between 1st February-1st March 2018 Hiscox received:

• 23% YoY increase in page visits to the Hiscox website

• 54% YoY increase in new insurance quotes issued

• New business Gross Written Premiums of over £114,000 representing a 22% YoY increase in new customer revenue! (Source:Hiscox)

Additionally, our campaign and The Hiscox Cyber Readiness report generated significant levels of brand fame, benefitting the company’s profile:

•400% increase in social media mentions of Hiscox Cyber (source:Pulsar)

•Coverage from over 30 major news organisations including The BBC, The Guardian, Ad Age and Campaign reaching an additional 6.5 million people.