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Five priority steps to get more value from cyber insurance

1

Use the cyber insurance underwriting process to drive discipline and governance, rather than approaching as a tick-box exercise.

Why?

The cyber insurance underwriting process focuses on your key risks and controls and should complement your existing cyber risk management frameworks. It can provide independent validation of the maturity of your controls and demonstrate to regulators and stakeholders a strong commitment to cyber hygiene. Accurate and honest disclosure is essential to avoid coverage issues, with particular scrutiny currently on multi‑factor authentication and how consistently it’s deployed across your organization.

How?

Identify and engage the stakeholders best-placed to provide accurate input to the underwriting process.

If insurers’ requests for information are unclear, challenge and clarify them with your broker early.

2

Align your policy coverage with your real risks, rather than assumptions.

Why?

Cyber insurance cover varies widely. Understanding what you have and aligning this to your real risk exposures ensures your policy will respond as you expect and delivers value when it matters. When cover doesn’t reflect reality, you risk both gaps in protection and paying for cover you may not need. Cyber risks can also extend beyond cyber insurance, so consider the impacts across your wider insurance portfolio, particularly around directors’ and officers’ liability.

How?

Use claims and loss data to understand how cyber losses really occur and what that means for your organization.

Prioritize your most material scenarios and design coverage around these realities instead of relying on generic assumptions.

3

Align your policy limits with your financial exposures.

Why?

Many organizations tend to base cyber insurance decisions on average breach sizes when your true exposures may be driven by low-frequency, high-severity scenarios characterized by long discovery times and extended business interruption. Aligning your limits and retention around your specific financial exposures will help prevent underinsurance, avoid overpaying for excessive limits you don’t need and improve your risk transfer strategy.

How?

Use risk quantification modeling to ensure your insurance is structured to reflect the real cost of downtime, vendor failure, privacy claims and ransomware.

4

Integrate cyber insurance into your incident response and continuity planning and testing.

Why?

Your cyber insurance policy will be less effective if it isn’t embedded in how you respond to an incident. Using non-approved vendors and late notification can cause issues around claims. If you’re the buyer of cyber insurance and haven’t yet been engaged in your organizations’ cyber planning and testing, it’s time to partner with colleagues. Your cyber cover is more likely to respond as the business expects when it’s not seen as a stand-alone item.

How?

Review your insurer‑approved vendors and hardwire them into your incident response plan so teams can act without delay.

Onboard partners early and include them in exercises.

If you rely on external providers outside the policy, agree these with your insurers in advance.

Ensure the appropriate stakeholders understand notification requirements and claim evidence before an incident occurs.

5

Maximize pre-loss risk management services to improve your cyber resilience.

Why?

Most cyber insurance provides access to a suite of pre-loss risk management services, from board-level response planning and tabletop exercises, to data services. These can complement your existing approach, fill gaps and improve your overall cyber resilience and insurance outcomes. These services are already included in the premium you pay and may enable you to eliminate spend on similar services you would otherwise pay for.

How?

Engage with your broker and insurer to understand the full suite of what’s included. Review what different insurers provide and engage with internal stakeholders to consider how these value-added services could best support you.

“…services are already included in the premium you pay and may enable you to eliminate spend on similar services you would otherwise pay for”