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Experts identify strategies to safeguard data and systems
Agents and brokers are finding increased cus- tomer demand for cyber liability insurance and risk management advice on dealing with cyber exposures. While it's important to take care of client and prospect exposures, it's equally impor- tant-perhaps more so-to make sure the agency is up to speed on the latest threats and ways to address them.
The cyber landscape continues to change. "Exposures continue to evolve," says Jim Whetstone, professions prac- tice leader at Hiscox. "And they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We'll see changes in everything from the methods used by hackers to some of the newer exposures, such as those presented by BYOD-bring your own device to work-to the consumer protection and other regulations that impact entities after a breach or privacy event takes place."
According to David Gerlach, director of information secu- rity at Applied Systems, one of the newest cyber security threats faced by businesses, including insurance agencies and brokerages, involves what's called 'ransom ware.' "This type of cyber-attack is a virus that infects a computer and holds data hostage through a form of strong encryption," he explains. "With this encryption, data is scrambled and made unusable. The attackers then ask for money in exchange for the key to unlock the data."
Nephi Williams, CISA, CISSP, corporate information security compliance manager at Vertafore, notes that as technology constantly evolves, so do threats to vendors that provide technology and software to agencies and broker- ages. "Over the past few months," he says, "there have been several instances of third-party software vulnerabilities that had the potential of significant security impact if not addressed." One example is the OpenSSL Heartbleed vul- nerability that was announced in April of this year.
A number of other exposures exist. Gerlach points out that unpatched software and phishing attacks are threats to agencies and brokerages, as is the use of...