The cost of cyber insurance grew at a double-digit rate between 2017 and 2022, as many large enterprises sought ways to mitigate the risk of a damaging cyber attack. While the costs have slowed in recent years, premiums remain 283% higher than 2017. One major cyber insurance provider recently predicted that the market, now valued at an estimated $15.6 Billion globally, will grow by just 5% in 2025.
Despite this slowdown in the price of premiums, the costs are rising in other ways. For example, many cyber insurance providers are now requiring potential customers to meet more stringent security standards before offering them a policy. Recent reporting has shown that other cyber insurers are adjusting policies to limit payouts if a major incident occurs due to an unpatched vulnerability that wasn’t remediated in a timely manner.
This blog post will discuss strategies for reducing the costs of cyber insurance to your business. While there are many factors that you cannot control—the size of your organization, the industry you’re in, all the regions in which you operate—there are many other variables that can be influenced with the right combination of people, processes, and technologies.
Getting The Best Rate: Challenges & Strategies For CISOs
Recent developments in the cyber insurance market present challenges for CISOs and other senior security leaders. As premiums rise and underwriters demand proof of stronger security postures, CISOs must demonstrate that their organization is not just reacting to threats but getting ahead of them. Preemptive security processes and technologies are becoming vital in negotiating discounts to cyber insurance premiums.
The most effective strategies to lowering your rate are what many would consider cybersecurity fundamentals. By focusing on the cyber threats most likely to impact your business, ensuring compliance with industry standards, and conducting audits to ensure security controls are working as intended, you’re already way ahead. This proactive approach can have a direct impact on lowering cyber insurance costs, creating a safer and more secure enterprise.
SixMap is a valuable tool for organizations aiming to reduce cyber insurance costs. By providing real-time insights into your external security posture, SixMap helps you proactively detect and mitigate risks before they turn into costly incidents. This doesn’t just reduce risk and strengthen security posture—it also creates a compelling case for lower premiums.
1. Understanding The Threat Landscape
Insurance providers assess premiums based on the specific risks that businesses face. For CISOs, demonstrating a precise understanding of the unique threats targeting their industry is essential. For example, an e-commerce company might be more prone to brand impersonation attacks and fraud, while a healthcare provider could be vulnerable to misconfigured medical devices and large patient database exposures that lead to regulatory fines. In any case, a corporation that conducts significantly more acquisitions invites more risk every time they bring another business into the fold.
By leveraging tools like SixMap, CISOs can prioritize security efforts where they will have the greatest impact, ensuring that the business isn’t just addressing low-severity issues but the high-risk vulnerabilities specific to their business-critical assets. This tailored approach can reassure insurers that your organization is taking measures to mitigate the most pressing risks.
2. Demonstrating Preemptive Risk Management
Insurance companies reward organizations that demonstrate preemptive cyber defense strategies. By using tools that continuously monitor, detect, and prioritize potential weaknesses, CISOs can show underwriters a clear plan for identifying, addressing, and mitigating risks.
SixMap’s capabilities allow organizations to obtain a holistic view on all of their IT infrastructure that’s visible from the Internet. This expansive vantage point uncovers all potential attack surfaces—across on-prem, public cloud, and private cloud environments—so security teams can pinpoint the most pressing vulnerabilities, and respond swiftly with mitigation actions. This proactive posture again signals to insurers that your organization is a lower-risk client.
3. Risk-Based Decision Making
Today’s insurance landscape is highly focused on how well an organization manages risk. Companies that can show advanced security controls plus measurable, data-driven decision-making are likely to receive lower premiums.
SixMap enables CISOs to present a clear picture of their risk management strategy, focusing on the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest threat to operations. For instance, by resolving a significant percentage of high-risk vulnerabilities quickly, organizations can demonstrate to insurers that they are proactive about reducing their exposure to major cyber incidents, which can lead to reduced insurance premiums.
4. The Value of Speed and Accuracy
One of the key benefits of being proactive in managing cyber threats is the ability to respond quickly and accurately to high-probability risks. SixMap empowers security teams to focus on what matters most, reducing the time spent on low-priority threats and enabling quicker containment of serious issues.
Recent reporting has noted that the time to exploit vulnerabilities can be down to as little as 22 minutes in some cases, meaning that every second counts. This rapid response capability benefits insurers by minimizing the potential financial damage from a breach, which in turn can lead to reduced premiums. When companies can demonstrate the ability to detect and contain threats swiftly and efficiently, they stand out as lower-risk clients in the eyes of insurance providers.
5. Regulatory Compliance and Reduced Exposure
In many sectors, particularly healthcare and finance, compliance with regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, or CCPA is not just a best practice, but a legal requirement. Non-compliance can result in hefty fines and be compounded by increased cyber insurance costs. SixMap helps organizations identify gaps in compliance by mapping vulnerabilities that could lead to compliance challenges, notably by finding shadow IT assets that may be missed by traditional automated tools.
SixMap’s Value in Reducing Cyber Insurance Costs
Reducing cyber insurance premiums isn’t just about demonstrating good security—it’s about proving that your organization is actively managing and reducing cyber risk. With cyber insurance becoming a growing financial concern for businesses, tools like SixMap provide a distinct advantage by allowing CISOs to non-intrusively assess vulnerabilities, prioritize the most likely threats, and ensure compliance with industry standards.
By using SixMap, organizations can clearly show insurers that they are not only prepared to respond to threats but are proactively managing their security posture. With cyber threats continuously evolving, SixMap offers a smart, efficient way to safeguard your enterprise and optimize your cyber insurance strategy, ensuring that your organization is well-protected while keeping insurance costs under control.