Today, we can expect much more from our cyber insurance coverage. It’s gone from a static safety net, there to provide financial support after an incident, into a strategic protection layer in its own right. That’s because, as attacks become ever more sophisticated, insurers like CFC have evolved their offerings to help identify and prevent harm before it arises, not merely respond after the damage has been done.
Why is it important to secure cyber insurance before an attack happens?
Proactive cyber insurance coverage can include a broad suite of services designed to strengthen your cyber defenses before an attack occurs:
- Exclusive information from threat intelligence feeds
- Threat hunting
- Active and passive vulnerability scanning
- 24/7 monitoring & notifications
- Employee training, like phishing simulations
- Claims trends warnings
All this alongside traditional legal and financial support if a breach does happen.
The effectiveness of these services lies in their ability to detect and shut down potential threats early. For example, vulnerability scanning can catch weakness in outdated software before its exploited by hackers. Meanwhile, phishing simulations can empower staff to spot suspicious emails, which remain the most common entry point for attacks.
Being proactive isn’t just the smart choice. It’s become paramount to surviving in today’s business landscape. Waiting until after a breach to think about cyber insurance is like considering a burglar alarm after a break-in.
Consider what happened to the British Library in 2023, when a ransomware group leaked 600 GB of sensitive staff and user data, crippled online services, and caused over £6M in recovery costs. And that’s not even accounting for the reputational harm and loss of public trust.
Through threat intelligence preventative security services, offered under comprehensive cyber policies, businesses can be alerted to weaknesses early and patch vulnerabilities before bad actors exploit them. This dramatically reduces both the likelihood and impact of an attack.
Does your business have cyber insurance? Let’s explore what proactive cyber coverage actually includes.
How does cyber insurance help minimize damage from threats?
Cyber attacks hold the disruptive potential to take systems offline and grind business operations to a halt. The fallout can be structural, operational, and financial. Proactive cyber insurance works to prevent these threats and risks before they snowball.
Ransomware alone is responsible for over 75% of total cyber losses, making it the costliest cyber threat to businesses today. Attackers can target anything and everything, from financial records to supply chain systems, with the aim of encrypting files and demanding payment in exchange for access.
Businesses with comprehensive cyber insurance are significantly better equipped to fight back. Proactive policies often come bundled with round-the-clock incident response teams who act quickly to contain breaches and restore systems, minimizing costly downtime.
The financial benefits are huge, too. Cyber policies with proactive coverage should also include support for recovery expenses like system restoration, PR management, legal fees, customer notification and regulatory fines. Companies without insurance have to face these costs alone – costs that can easily skyrocket.
Many proactive insurers like CFC offer active and passive vulnerability scanning to help identify and eliminate vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. That means fewer breaches and a faster path to recovery if one does occur.
Modern cyber insurance: beyond just reactive coverage
Cyber insurance has traditionally been reactive, covering business interruption losses, helping manage data breach response, and providing legal and PR support after an incident. But today’s threats frankly demand more - and cyber insurance has evolved accordingly. Good cyber insurance is no longer about just responding to attacks, but working to prevent them outright. And that shift is reshaping the entire industry.
Over the past 25 years, CFC has led innovation across the insurance industry, combining comprehensive financial protection with proactive security services. These modern policies go far beyond traditional models by including risk management tools, vulnerability scanning, even real-time threat intelligence.
And why the shift? Because the scale of cybercrime is exploding. The average cost of a data breach in 2024 was $4.88M, a 10% jump from 2023. Being able to effectively prevent incidents can be the difference in business survival. Proactive insurance is no longer a luxury, but the new baseline for doing business safely in the digital age.
Threat intelligence and vulnerability management services
CFC’s proactive cyber insurance gives access to exclusive threat intelligence feeds and proprietary vulnerability detection tools. These aren’t one-time checks, but ongoing services designed to keep your systems secure as threats evolve.
Threat intelligence is vital information from our proprietary data and partnerships with government and private threat intelligence organizations. By receiving and reviewing exclusive data, we uncover cybercriminals’ targets and identify which businesses need to take action.
Vulnerability scanning tools operate continuously, alerting your business to newly discovered flaws in internal systems of third-party software. Think of them like a health check for your IT infrastructure, identifying what needs fixing before an attacker finds it. Some insurers, including CFC, integrate these tools directly with their policyholder platforms, offering real-time visibility into system health.
With these features in place, businesses can be alerted to and patch critical vulnerabilities, closing holes that could have proven catastrophic if left unchecked. It’s hard to overstate the importance of doing this: plugging gaps like these before they lead to breaches is a potentially business-saving endeavor.
Employee training and phishing simulations
Even the most secure network can be undone by a single click. Human error remains one of the biggest risks in cyber security, and that’s exactly why proactive cyber policies should include employee training.
Comprehensive cyber insurance may come with ongoing security awareness programs and phishing simulation tools. These services regularly test your team’s ability to spot fake emails, malicious links, and other social engineering tactics. Like the phishing simulation offered within CFC’s Response app, employees receive mock phishing messages. Those who click the link or type in their credentials are directed to educational content teaching them what to look out for next time. Senior members of staff are then sent a report on the results and who may need some additional support. Over time, these programs dramatically reduce clickthrough rates on malicious emails. It’s all part of turning your staff into your first line of defense, contributing to a culture of security, in which fewer mistakes means fewer breaches.
Proactively keep your business safe from cyber attacks
Cyber insurance is only one piece of the puzzle. To truly protect your business, you need a multilayered defense strategy blending preventative coverage with robust cyber hygiene:
- multifactor authentication for all systems and users
- regular data backups, stored offline and tested frequently
- a detailed incident response plan so your team knows what to do if an attack occurs
- patch management through prompt updating of all systems.
CFC complements these efforts on your part with powerful preventative and responsive measures that work to identify and alert your organization to threats and help eliminate security gaps before they morph into full-blown threats.
Keep your business one step ahead with proactive cyber insurance, specially designed to detect, prevent, and respond to threats before they spiral out of control. Because waiting until a breach has already come and gone is no longer an option - not only if you want to stay competitive, but if you want to survive in today’s digital world, period.
Check out CFC’s Cyber hub to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving world of cyber liability insurance. For anything else, you can get in touch with our underwriters, or reach out to our expert team at cybermarketing@cfc.com.
