Technographic data is becoming increasingly relevant in commercial cyber risk assessment, but the challenge for insurers lies in translating this data into actionable insights.
Gallagher Re announced that it seeks to address this issue through the development of its Technographic Insight Discovery Engine (TIDE), a tool designed to help insurers identify which technographic indicators most strongly correlate with cyber claims and how to apply those indicators in underwriting processes.
According to Gallagher Re, leaked information – detected across the surface web, as well as in deep and dark web environments – is a predictive signal of cyber claims frequency. This form of data provides unique value beyond standard firmographic indicators, which typically include company size, industry, and location.
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The firm notes that technographic measurements related to the scale of an organization's cyber presence also retain predictive value.
Gallagher Re asserts that insurers can benefit from this data in two core areas: risk segmentation and underwriting. By identifying risks with the highest expected claim frequency, insurers can optimize their portfolio strategies.
Additionally, the data enables more precise underwriting decisions by helping to balance exposure and pricing against the likelihood of claims, with the potential to adjust terms where necessary.
In a prior study involving more than 62,000 organizations in 67 countries, Gallagher Re demonstrated that external scanning data can effectively predict cyber claims. The research showed that insurers focusing on the top 20% of risks flagged through such data could reduce loss ratios by as much as 16.4%.
One of the primary implications for underwriters is the role of leaked information as a differentiator. Recognizing its connection to claims activity allows insurers to target their efforts on the most relevant risk attributes, Gallagher Re reports.
The use of curated threat intelligence to interpret and contextualize raw data further supports this effort by reducing noise and focusing on actionable elements.
Gallagher Re’s analysis also points to the importance of considering the size of an organization's cyber footprint. Specifically, metrics such as the number of externally facing IP addresses can correlate more strongly with cyber claims than conventional factors like revenue or employee count.
Gallagher Re also points to the broader value of understanding the distribution of these risk features across a portfolio. Doing so can contribute to more refined underwriting strategies that consider the dual objectives of business growth and risk containment. This includes assessing where specific technographic traits are concentrated and how they may influence claims patterns.
The shift in cyber loss trends is another consideration highlighted in Gallagher Re’s findings. The firm observed that ransomware now plays a larger role than data breaches in driving claims, with threat actors using double extortion tactics and adapting to geopolitical shifts such as the Russia–Ukraine conflict.
Future research from Gallagher Re will explore additional areas, including the use of technical footprint data as a claims predictor, claims tagging for severity assessment, and evaluating claims data to support pricing adequacy.
In line with the evolving threat landscape, Gallagher Re has also identified that cyber claims are increasingly complex and subject to longer settlement times. Larger insureds in particular are more likely to encounter delayed claims closure, driven in part by the potential for litigation and expanding incident scopes.
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