Do you need help & advice with Cybersecurity?
It turns out that cyber insurance might not always have your best interests at heart. While it can certainly help cover costs after a cyber incident, it’s really just a small part of the bigger picture. Right now, the risk of cyberattacks is sky-high, many businesses have weak compliance measures, and the number of claims is just exploding.
This pressure is forcing insurance companies to start offering "risk control" tools. The catch is, a lot of these tools are pretty basic and cheap. They’re mainly there to cut down the insurer’s exposure, not to genuinely lower your business’s actual risk. You might find yourself just ticking boxes on security checks while much larger security holes are left wide open.
Key Takeaways
- Use insurance as a safety net, but don’t rely on it as your primary defence.
- Build a cyber security plan that’s based on your actual business risks, not just what the insurer’s tools suggest.
Why Insurers Are Pushing Risk Control Tools
Insurance companies are getting absolutely hammered with cyber claims. Year after year, these claims are doubling or even tripling, and it’s just not a sustainable situation for them. A few years back, the amount they were paying out was actually more than they were bringing in from premiums.
To try and get a handle on this, they’ve started rolling out tools aimed at helping businesses manage their cyber risk. The idea is to get a grip on the situation before it gets even worse.
The Problem with Insurer-Provided Tools
Here’s the rub: these tools are often not very good. They tend to be the cheapest options available. Their main purpose is to reduce the risk for the insurance company itself. They might be effective at getting rid of the riskiest 10% of businesses that aren’t doing anything at all to protect themselves. However, they do very little to actually lower the cyber risk for your own business.
