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Purpose – The starting point for the considerations the authors make in this paper are the special features of family businesses in the area of management discussed in the literature. It has been established here that family businesses sometimes choose different organizational setups than nonfamily businesses. This has not yet been investigated for cybersecurity. In the context of cybersecurity, there has been little theoretical or empirical work addressing the question of whether the qualitative characteristics of family businesses have an impact on the understanding of cybersecurity and the organization of cyber risk defense in the companies. Based on theoretically founded hypotheses, a quantitative empirical study was conducted in German companies. Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on a quantitative-empirical survey of 184 companies, the results of which were analyzed using statistical-empirical methods. Findings – The article asked – based on the subjective perception of cybersecurity and cyber risks – to what extent family businesses are sensitized to the topic and what conclusions they draw from it. An interesting tension emerges: family businesses see their employees more as a security risk, but do less than nonfamily businesses in terms of both training and organizational establishment. Whether this is due to a lack of technical or managerial expertise, or whether family businesses simply think they can prevent cybersecurity with less formal methods such as trust, is open to conjecture, but cannot be demonstrated with the research approach taken here. Qualitative follow-up studies are needed here. Originality/value – This paper represents the first quantitative survey on cybersecurity with a specific focus on family businesses. It shows tension between awareness, especially of risks emanating from employees, and organizational routines that have not been implemented or established.

Cyber-security beyond the concept must be a product to be offered to modern society. We live in a complex world based on the digitization of products and services. Digitization also involves a complex system of associated risks. The road to the world of tomorrow goes through today's world and an analysis of the current situation in the contemporary economies about cyber risk insurance is only a first step that this article aims to achieve.The study aims to substantiate the need to formulate and assume policies and to support the regulation of cyber risk coverage by ensuring the need to support sectoral strategies to increase the level of maturity of companies from the perspective of protection against cyber threats. There is also a need to set up a cyber-risk reporting system, at least for critical and important infrastructures, the development and use by insurers of advisory and evaluation models based on standards and certifications recognized at the level of including the development of necessary skills for insurers to engineer these risks.