What to Know About Your Cyber Insurance Provider- Getting the Most from their Services

Working with your Cyber Insurance provider goes beyond just obtaining a policy with the right coverage – your organization can benefit from the myriad services they provide.

Healthcare organizations such as hospitals recognize the importance of securing cyber insurance to protect against workflow disruptions, financial losses and liabilities. The process to obtain a cyber insurance policy, however, is complex, and obtaining cyber insurance will involve several considerations - including navigating various challenges.

Despite these challenges, obtaining cyber insurance as a healthcare provider organization does more than just protect the organization in an event of a cyber event. These insurance companies have enough client data on breaches that they’re able to estimate your actual risk rating. And while you will need to fill out a lengthy questionnaire that scrutinizes the implementation of your cyber program and its processes, the cyber insurance company will participate in the actual risk analysis for the organization. A lot of companies can provide assessment services. But as insurance companies are actuaries, they can leverage a trove of historical data for a highly detailed assessment.

Healthcare cyber leaders can leverage the results of the risk analysis and present the details to the board to gain the buy-in necessary to obtain resources and enact impactful change.

Here are some other ways that your cyber insurance provider’s services an important benefit in today’s risk environment:

Cyber threats are always evolving: Cybercriminals constantly develop new tactics, challenging organizations to keep up or face the inevitable ‘bad day’. That means, healthcare entities’ cyber insurance policies will need regular updates and reviews to remain effective. Businesses must stay informed about the latest threats and work closely with insurers to adapt their approach to mitigation, as well as their cyber coverage. Your cyber insurance provider is available to help you continuously assess your policy coverage needs.

Risk Assessment challenges: Insurers evaluate the level of cyber risk a business faces, which varies depending on the industry, size, and nature of the business. This assessment often involves security audits and detailed information about the company's cybersecurity infrastructure. Insurers request volumes of information from their clients, often involving detailed questionnaires and evidentiary information. But, they also bring real data to the process, based on actuarial data. This facilitates a more informed process.

Regulatory requirements and compliance issues: Different jurisdictions have varying regulations regarding data protection and cybersecurity, and businesses need to ensure their insurance policies comply with these regulations to avoid legal penalties and increased risk. Your insurance provider actually helps you understand these requirement and insure against the risk.

Coverage Limits and Costs: Cyber insurance policies vary widely in coverage, and businesses need to consider what aspects of cyber risk they want to insure against, such as data breaches, ransomware attacks, business interruption, and legal liabilities. Understanding the potential financial impact of different types of cyber incidents is crucial. As we move toward implementing new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, cyber insurance providers are already assessing those risks and coverage amounts and types.

Loss Estimating: In terms of financial impact, cyber insurers rely on actuarial loss data to help assess the potential financial impact of cyber events and enable them to set appropriate premiums for their policies. By analyzing the possible magnitude of losses, they can also ensure their products are appropriately priced to cover potential claims, while maintaining competitiveness in the market.

Working with your cyber insurance provider on this area is a two-way exchange of information. In terms of loss estimation and its relationship to coverage and costs, insurance providers are uniquely positioned to provide information and data and, in fact, are already doing this analysis for their own purposes. It is in this area that a partnership with the insurance provider is key. A proactive exchange of information is important to refine policy needs.

The insurance provider can provide potential loss data based on its own actuarial data. This rich trove of data helps them to recommend a dollar amount of coverage for the policy. This actuarial loss data can be a tremendous benefit to your organization, so make sure you understand how they do these calculations and what the results are for your organization.

The cyber insurer’s coverage needs estimation is best informed by information provided by the organization itself, such as cyber event-related, scenario-based data on impact to the organization, for example, of a ransomware or denial-of-service attack. Information on how long a system will be down and the impact of downtime of key business processes is especially informative to the insurance provider.

A proactive, two-way dialog on this process can provide rich and impactful information for your organization – including executives and the board of directors’.

Other Key Services

Cyber Insurers also provide valuable insights and guidance on emerging threats and best practices for managing cyber risk. Importantly, insurers often offer services such cybersecurity training incident response planning and tabletop exercises. Some even provide services relating to operating a Security Operations Center (SOC) and post-breach forensic analysis.

These services can help businesses strengthen their cybersecurity posture though monitoring and post-breach analysis. By leveraging these resources, healthcare organizations can enhance their resilience, better protect themselves against cyber threats and enhance their response capabilities.

Working together for Success

Viewing the relationship with the insurer as a two-way partnership can help healthcare organizations safeguard against the financial and operational impacts of cyber incidents. By addressing these challenges proactively and leveraging insurers’ resources and services, healthcare organizations can better protect themselves against cyber threats, enhance their cybersecurity resilience, and ensure that their cyber policies reflect their needs.