At the end of August, President Biden met with the leaders from the largest companies in tech, finance, energy, education, and insurance to create a cyber security action plan.
The meeting was sparked by an increase in pervasive and severe ransomware attacks over the last year and a half, and private sector leaders are working with the government to come up with strategies to improve the cyber hygiene of American businesses.
Insurance CEOs from Coalition, Resilience, Travelers, and Vantage Group Holdings met with the President and his administration to discuss risk engineering and business engagement.
“Cyber security is often thought of as a technology problem but the fact that the insurance industry was included was really a reflection of the fact that the administration views this as a risk management problem,” Joshua Motta, founder and CEO of Coalition told Insurance Business.
“The insurance industry is responsible for helping make businesses resilient to cyberattacks and can set incentives appropriately that encourage businesses to adopt more secure forms of technology,” Motta added.
“The purpose of this meeting was to identify ways in which we can encourage versus mandate better practices and hygiene to decrease the likelihood of successful attacks,” said Vishaal Hariprasad, CEO of Resilience Cyber Insurance Solutions.
“It comes down to clarity,” he added. “Insurance can make a complex topic like cyber security simple and actionable.”
The breakout session with CEOs of tech and insurance was led by several cabinet officials and members of Biden’s administration. The industries are working with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish and maintain a set of cyber standards for every critical industry in America.
Other key takeaways from the session involved creating incentive structures with the insurance industry, accelerating information sharing between the insurance and the cyber sectors, providing the legal resources for the federal government to disrupt attackers, and education.
“Coalition, among other leading technology companies, has pledged to work with NIST in order to update and refresh standards in order to reflect the emerging risks businesses face today,” Motta explained.
“We have to continue to update standards to stay relevant to modern threats,” Hariprasad added.
Coalition is committing to make its cyber risk management platform, Coalition Control, available at no cost for all American businesses. “The purpose is to help companies control their risk, which we’ve been able to demonstrate that we’ve done effectively with policyholders - now that is open to all businesses,” said Motta.
“One of the core challenges with cyber security at large is that it is expensive, businesses can’t afford to be secure,” Motta explained. “Our hope is by democratizing access to cyber security, we can drive considerably more adoption of the tools and services that can protect businesses.”
“There are actionable initiatives coming out of this, companies are committing to providing resources without making it overly burdensome,” said Hariprasad.
“Resilience identifies gaps and works with clients throughout the life cycle of their policy to improve their cyber hygiene. We shouldn’t be treating the symptoms, we should be treating the causes.”
