Now More Than Ever, It’s Everyone’s Responsibility

Insurance agencies are hubs of sensitive policyholder data, and that data must be shared with carriers. Recent lockdowns across many U.S. states due to the COVID-19 pandemic have presented challenges for agencies, who continued to operate based on insurance’s status as an essential business. At the same time, cybercriminals saw new opportunities to penetrate businesses, with more employees working from home.

A lot of the time, these will be personal computers that haven’t been under management of the agency or brokerage, so you have no idea what the patch status is, if there’s sufficient anti-virus or if there is already an active infection on the computer.

Having a written security plan and protocols in place can ensure that the privacy expectations of policyholders are met, and that an agency or brokerage follows regional and national laws.

As chief technology officer at RedBird Security, some of the top cyber-risk concerns I see for agencies and brokerages include phishing and spear phishing attacks, as well as unsecured cloud apps like Office 365, Azure and Dropbox. Agency and brokerage leaders need to properly train personnel on current cyber threats and securely implement virtual private networks (VPNs) and remote access, especially as more employees are working from home.

Read the full article on RoughNotes.com.