Cyber insurance trends to watch in 2023: What employers need to know
As the frequency of cyber attacks increases, so has demand for cyber insurance. However, insurers are now asking for more proof companies have certain cybersecurity strategies in place before providing coverage.
As companies undertake massive initiatives around digital transformation and the pandemic, the IT and security problems created in their fallout have become increasingly more complex. Companies recognize this, and have aligned security priorities to their business priorities. As cyber insurance agencies continue to introduce new, strict requirements, businesses are under increasing pressure to meet them. The most effective approach businesses can take is by investing in solutions and processes that address existing requirements and can scale to meet new ones. Businesses must – and will continue to – manage the following issues:
- New architectures facilitating digital operations. The combination of digital transformation projects and the pandemic caused complexities in IT ecosystems. New VPN options, network segmentations, and tenants are a few components that most companies changed in their architectures.
- Larger attack surfaces to defend and observe. Business processes have become more complex and specialized, resulting in the adoption of more applications tuned to specific processes and purposes.
- Personnel limitations for Security Operations Centers (SOCs). SOCs have historically been reliant on the concentrated roles and responsibilities of a few security specialists. The entire response process has a single point of failure if these specialists either leave, become unavailable, or overloaded.
- More sophisticated attacks. Risk has become increasingly more dynamic and expansive. This is in part a combination of complex IT ecosystems, and growing attacker sophistication in how to take advantage of these complexities.
Related: What shape will cyber risks take in 2023?
These issues are dynamic, enduring, and likely permanent fixtures in operations. Acknowledging this, companies increase their agility, compliance, and cybersecurity posture by investing in solutions that best position them for how they respond to threats. Solutions like Challo, a process optimization platform with an emerging presence in designing, automating, and accelerating organizations’ Incident Response, manage these processes. Companies should seek Incident Response solutions under the joint aim of maintaining best security practices to meet their cyber insurance requirements. Incident Response solutions address these priorities by:
- Workflow integration and automation. Incident Response aggregates, locates, and presents data from across the IT environment into an intuitive view. From there, businesses can set up workflows specialized to each type of incident, determining which people, processes, and technologies to draw on for resolution.
- Templates for preparation. While SOCs cannot anticipate every threat, they can structure themselves to proactively mobilize against certain types of threats. Templating processes in workspaces – around the specific response – enables more comprehensive and targeted remediation against the threat.
- Leveraged business logic and knowledge base. Companies can make small teams feel like large teams by equipping them with resources that allow them to work smarter. Business logic streamlines processes, and knowledge bases can be leveraged into each step, leading to smarter, more effective decision making.
- Memorialized digital logbooks. Cyber insurance agencies are increasing requirements of evidence that companies need to demonstrate for compliance. Incident Response solutions can align incoming information, response activity, and decision making into a digital logbook.
Neil Ellis is the CIO and CISO at CafeX Communications, which has developed Challo.