BitSight, a leading security rating firm, and risk-modellers Kovrr, have announced they will partner to create and supply a new product for the insurance market. The date-driven product is designed to assist insurance companies with financially quantifying the risk and counter cybercrime.
The joint BitSight-Kovrr product is named the Financial Quantification for Insurance Cyber Risk, and it enables insurance companies to make business decisions regarding modeling, underwriting, and portfolio management. The product combines the specialist services by both BitSight and Kovrr. BitSight’s input to the product was through their data and analytics expertise. Whereas, Kovrr provided the technology for modeling cybercrime risks.
As a result of this joint product entering the market, cybercrime insurance providers can now underwrite companies and organizations regardless of their size, industry, or geographical location. It also means that they can do modeling for specific individual risks, the exposure a portfolio has to cybercrime risks, and provide an insured party with detailed security posture visibility. One of the first major insurance carriers to make use of the product is Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty.
The product could not have launched at a more appropriate time. According to Aon, the data and analytics specialists, insurance claims arising from cybercrime are on the rise. During 2019, the United States witnessed a 10% increase in its loss-ratio due to ransomware activity. This increase is in line with an overall hike in the number of cyberattacks, including phishing, ransomware, and other cybercrime tactics.
Bitsight’s Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) is Dave Fachetti, and he gave us a brief summary of the background to the product’s launch. He stated that the cyber insurance market relies on accurate, current, relevant, specific, and transparent data. He believes that BitSight is the industry’s best provider of comprehensive organizational security and performance data that external organizations can observe.
He continued by saying that the collaboration with Kovrr and the comprehensive automation and scalable technology for modeling cybercrime risks that they provide is fundamental to the cyber insurance industry’s success. Fachetti concluded that the joint BitSight-Kovrr product is essential to fulfill the industry’s requirement for a consistent and accurate approach to portfolio management and underwriting decision-making when dealing with cybercrime risks.
The Kovrr perspective came from their CEO, Yakir Golan. He believes that the product will enable the industry to understand the impact on an insurer’s portfolio resulting from a significant cyber incident. He also said that it would allow the requisite modeling to take place within such a scenario. Thus, the new product will contribute to the growth of the cyber insurance industry.
A further insight of the product’s benefits also came from Golan. He stated that the joint BitSight-Kovrr product would give cyber insurers the ability to fully implement various initiatives, ranging from underwriting single specific risks to managing generic risks across entire portfolios.
He concluded that the Kovrr team was excited to be collaborating with BitSight and helping the cyber insurance worldwide.
