Paladin Cyber has rebranded to Upfort, which CEO and co-founder Xing Xin said was part of a mission to move from focusing on cyber prevention to providing more holistic cyber protection and resilience.
“When we were founded in 2017, we really focused on addressing the gap that we saw in the security market, because the enterprise point solution, single function ones weren’t practical for 99% of companies out there,” Xin said.
As Xin and his colleagues have worked more closely with insurers and brokers, they’ve realized that there are a lot of opportunities to make the underwriting of and acquiring of cyber insurance easier.
Thus, the name Upfort came about from the notion of “allowing someone to upgrade their readiness and fortify their resilience all in one transaction,” the CEO said.
In an interview with Insurance Business, Xin spoke about why cyber resilience is more important than mere prevention and what Upfort’s two new hires will bring to the table.
Xin noted how the biggest difference between cyber prevention and resilience is that the latter focuses on giving a client the tools and insight to deal with a loss incident should it occur rather than just focusing on stopping an event from happening — which will never be 100% effective.
“When you think of resiliency, you want to be ready so that if something happens, how do you minimize the damage,” he said.
“It’s more about how to react appropriately and handle secure data, get your business back up and running, as well as managing risk.”
For Upfort, cyber insurance is a critical pillar in its resiliency program because it gives access to a team of experts who are there to help a client better understand the full extent of the loss event and how to get up and running quickly.
“The great thing about working so closely with insurers and brokers is that we have a deep appreciation for the challenges that they’ve had, especially in this ever-evolving cyber insurance market,” Xing said.
With the rebrand, Upfort is continuing to work with the same partners and clients that it has created a relationship with but using its turnkey platform to offer more expansive services.
When asked what a turnkey platform is, Xing said that it is a merging of underwriting and security technology to change an insured’s risk profile.
“We have proprietary risk assessment and mitigation tools that are powered by and driving better outcomes on nine figures of cyber insurance premium,” he added.
Xing and his team were prompted to create the turnkey platform because many insureds did not correlate their specific risks to the coverage or services they were purchasing.
The digital solution is meant to help underwriters iron out inaccuracies and make it easier for those questions to be answered accurately for more personalized coverage.
Additionally, the platform offers what it calls “automated underwriting”, which, according to Xing, will seamlessly prompt and automate “a lot of the processing as well.”
“You won’t need to wait for the underwriter to manually create something, offloading a lot of that work from all the different steps in that value chain. It will be tailored to a client based on a client’s specific risks based on similar data points we have.”
With the rebrand, Upfort is looking to expand its business in new ways and reach out to new clients in the process.
The company is excited to build strategic partnerships with carriers, brokers, and other aggregators looking to address the cyber risk of large, under-protected populations.
“We are thrilled to open up our platform to unlock value for new partners across the risk management ecosystem,” Xing said.
Upfort is interested in working with larger organizations that may have done a great job in cyber security for their own operations but are subject to risk from the vulnerabilities of third parties, such as vendors, suppliers, or franchisees.
To help grow these business opportunities, Upfort has brought on board Jeremy Wieber and Matthew Leanza as the company’s head of strategic partnerships and head of business development, respectively.
“They’re actually the first go-to market hires ever for the company,” Xing said. “We’ve spent so much growing and developing our platform. This really signifies that next step.”
