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Your first home, establishing your career, marriage, a new baby, a teen’s first car, a student going to college, retirement—many of life’s major events can affect not only your life insurance and estate plans but also your property and liability insurance. While insurance may not be top of mind during these memorable moments and key life-stage milestones, failure to make necessary changes to your policies can lead to uncovered losses.

Cloud-based applications, also known as Software as a Service (SaaS), offer significant benefits. They are highly affordable, require minimal IT involvement, have no hardware requirements, and offer great flexibility. Yet there can be significant risks to a firm if it does not review vendors carefully. Unfortunately, security controls vary significantly from one SaaS provider to the next. Knowing what to look for when selecting SaaS vendors and implementing sound security measures will help protect your firm against a data breach and the significant repercussions that come with it.

Commercial agreements come in a variety of types, but most have certain common provisions that should be carefully reviewed in the context of the underlying transaction covered by the agreement. When entering or reviewing one of these agreements, it is important to address the five key provisions that sometimes go unnoticed or are not given proper attention in the review process: (1) Confidentiality Provisions; (2) Indemnity Provisions; (3) Consequential and Special Damages; (4) Product Warranties; and (5) Audit Rights.

A significant step in the acquisition process is determining the structure of the deal. The two most common deal structures are: (1) the purchase of the ownership interests of the target (such as a stock deal), and (2) the purchase of substantially all of the target’s assets (or an asset deal). In an asset deal, the implication is that the target’s liabilities that are not expressly assumed by the acquirer remain liabilities of the target, and the acquirer will not have exposure to them. As a general rule, this is correct.

News reports show large-scale data breaches are on the rise and affecting large retailers and even consumer credit organizations. There are numerous categories of cyber crime, but the ones that affect the most victims include identity theft, credit card fraud, and social networking scams. However, there are actions you can take to better protect yourself, your family, and your lifestyle from cyber crime and its long-lasting effects.

Business impersonation scams are a large and growing risk for high-net-worth individuals, closely held business owners, and institutions. Scams have claimed victims in all 50 states and more than 100 countries and there is every reason to believe the threat is growing. Learn seven steps that can help you protect yourself and your business from impersonation and other types of fraud.

Ransomware has become one of the top threats to data stored on company networks and personal computers and will continue to be a top security concern in the coming years. For those unfamiliar with ransomware, it’s a type of malicious software (also known as malware) that, when downloaded to a computer, encrypts files so they can no longer be accessed. Cybercriminals will hold the user’s files hostage until the owner pays a ransom.

Some 90 percent of adults over 65 prefer to “age in place,” and even the need for health or mobility assistance doesn’t change their desire to stay in their own homes. It raises issues not just for Baby Boomers, but for those who are responsible for their transitioning through the stages of aging. The “aging in place” trend has also brought with it significantly more options and risks on the continuum of care. Welcome to senior citizenship, 21st Century style.

Cybersecurity risk creates a vexing set of challenges for family offices, high net worth families and executives, who, like any other business, would be well-served to make cybersecurity an important part of their estate planning and asset protection strategies. If the family or executive is prominent, a host of other issues related to privacy and identity protection apply. While there is no simple solution to the growing risks posed by cybercrime, there are few steps family offices, high net worth families, and executives can take to minimize the cyber attacks.

As the benefits and capabilities of the Internet of Things (IoT) accrue, so does the amount of data that must be collected, managed, and integrated with connected devices—and by enterprises everywhere. It’s a challenge that demands a new kind of digital trust and data sharing tradeoffs. For more insights from this IoT series, see: