October ITL Focus: Cyber Threats

ITL FOCUS is a monthly initiative featuring topics related to innovation in risk management and insurance.

This month, we're focusing on Cyber Threats

September 30, 2022

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FROM THE EDITOR

The cyber insurance market is full of good news and bad news, good news and bad news, good news and bad news.

Let's start with the good news.

Targets are getting smarter about how to defend themselves. That's by far the biggest bit of good news. The improved defense is partly because employees are being trained to avoid phishing and other types of attacks. There is also a shift in focus away from relying on fire walls -- which aim to keep hackers outside the perimeter of IT systems but seemingly can all be breached if a hacker is determined enough, at which point the hacker has free rein. Instead, companies are adopting what's referred to as "trust no one" approach. That means that even someone who has presented credentials and is inside a firewall is assumed to be a potential danger and is continually challenged to authenticate himself. Defense has, in fact, improved to the point that the Ukrainians, in particular, and the world, in general, have blunted a wave of hacking attempts by Russians following the invasion of Ukraine in February.

Governments have begun to see cyber attacks as threats to national security, not just issues for the private sector, and are beginning to help. Among other things, they've figured out ways to track and recover the cryptocurrencies that are hackers' favored mechanism for ransom payments. Removing the anonymity should act as a deterrent.

As companies take the cyber threat more seriously, they are also protecting themselves by buying much more cyber insurance.

The insurance industry is leaning into the need by lining up much more capital to back cyber insurance and by helping customers better protect themselves.

Now for the bad news:

Hackers are getting smarter, too, and they are relentless in the face of a massive opportunity to enrich themselves.

In other words: no rest for the weary.

Cheers,
Paul

Historically, automation and flexibility have been at opposite ends of a spectrum: The more you automate something, the less flexibility you have. But it doesn't have to be that way.

As Megan Roche Pilcher, SVP and insurance go-to-market leader at IntellectAI, explains, AI has progressed to the point that it can automate significant chunks of underwriting. It can eliminate the keying and rekeying that traditionally happened as a submission went through a series of steps that might eventually result in a proposal and bound policy. At the same time, AI can pull together third-party data to enhance what's in the submission and can steer underwriters toward key issues, while enhancing collaboration with others in the enterprise who've dealt with those issues before. That automation enhances flexibility by freeing underwriters to do the important work that only they can do.

The flexibility is especially important in the insurance line that is our focus this month: cyber. It is changing so rapidly and unpredictably that we all have to stay our toes.

Read the Full Interview

"Historically, the more flexible and responsive to the market carriers needed to be, the more they relied on manual processes to make this happen. People don’t automatically think of insurance automation and flexibility together because of past experiences with old, monolithic systems. But that’s changed."

—Megan Roche Pilcher

Read the Full Interview

Is Cyber Insurance on Brink
of Collapse?

An industry that is too important to fail suffered claims of almost $7 billion in 2021 and now looks to take the lead in reducing client risk.

The Cyber Insurance Market Hardens

While the cyber market improved significantly in 2021, increases to prior-year reserves may cause a drag on earnings, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine creates uncertainty.

Read More

The Challenge of Quantum Resilience

Quantum computing, in the wrong hands, could create a multitude of digital risks, including advanced cyberattacks -- a significant problem for the insurance industry.

The Weak Point in Cyber
Security

The best place to start is by securing a well-known defensive weak point: privileged access that has administrator-level powers.

Coping With Insider and Outsider Fraud

Recent macroeconomic events involving supply chain slowdowns, flexible work arrangements and rising inflation have paved the way for a possible uptick in crime.

Read More

WINNING STRATEGIES TO TRANSFORM COMMERCIAL UNDERWRITING FOR INSURANCE CARRIERS, MGAS AND BROKERS: AI ADOPTION IN INSURANCE

Sponsored by IntellectAI

As the insurance industry continues to transform, insurance carriers are finding success without having to solve a complex set of problems in their transformation. With the right technology in place, today’s insurance carriers, MGAs and brokers can transform commercial underwriting to make it simple and insightful.

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FEATURED THOUGHT LEADERS

James Norrie

Zach Ballweg

Brian Brown

Paul Miskovich

Vaibhav Uttekar

Kevin Mason

Antonio Trotta

Joseph Carson

This Month Sponsored by: Intellect AI

IntellectAI is a suite of contemporary artificial intelligence products and data insights triangulated from thousands of sources for commercial underwriting offered through Intellect Design. The IntellectAI products take a strategic approach to tackling the biggest challenges for the industry. We are a proven leader in Data First Strategy for commercial underwriting.

Our underlying technology powers sophistication with simplicity ensuring an engaging and insightful user journey. Our AI cloud native products are known to address the most complex business objectives with the highest accuracy of outcome. Our skilled technical experts and data scientists seamlessly augment our customer teams to accelerate their transformation journey easily adapting as business models and technology evolves. www.intellectai.com