Introduction

Understanding Cyber Insurance  

Cyber insurance coverage, also referred to as cyber liability or cyber risk insurance, defends and provides detailed financial protection in the event of data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber-related crimes. Cyber insurance provides coverage for data breach forensics, legal representation, and notifying customers, along with regulatory penalties and losses due to operational downtime. Cyber insurers are facing increased demands as cyber and ransomware claims surge, with stricter requirements for insurers’ identity access and identity controls becoming more common in policies.

The Compliance Challenge

Checklists are now a common feature of underwriting standards, which include the following prerequisites: 

• Universal MFA for all administrative, remote, and command-line interfaces
• Discovery and safeguarding of non-human identities, service accounts, scripts, and machine-to-machine interfaces
• Real-time monitoring and thwarting of lateral movement, privilege escalation, and ransomware propagation.

Traditional IAM and MFA frameworks are incapable of meeting this level of protection across hybrid environments, legacy applications, and proprietary systems. Critical gaps that can hinder policy qualification or renewal are shared.

How Silverfort Enables Full Coverage

1. Rapid Compliance with Extended MFA Requirements 

With Silverfort RAP’s Runtime Access Protection Technology, you can MFA and adaptive authentication controls across your entire identity structure without needing agents, proxies, or modifications to current systems. Thus, Silverfort can: 

• Inforce MFA across cloud applications, legacy on-prem apps, and all command-line tools. 
• Risky Zug MFA. 
• Full policy compliance within the timeframe set by your broker.

2. Comprehensive Protection for All Identities

Insurers have expanded the scope of their scrutiny of non-human identities to include service accounts, which are now seen as possible attack vectors. Silverfort proactively identifies and secures all service accounts and machine identities across on-prem Active Directory, cloud directories, custom apps, and infrastructure components to ensure no blind spots.

3. Proactive Defense Against Ransomware and Lateral Movement

Through real-time monitoring of authentication request streams, Silverfort is capable of recognizing and thus responding to behavioral anomalies associated with lateral movement and/or privilege escalation. When anomalies of this nature occur, adaptive access policies can block access, require step-up authentication, or both. This action effectively mitigates the spread of ransomware, leading to a reduction in potential claim expenses. 

Business Value Beyond Regulatory Compliance

Policy Qualification and Renewal Acceleration 

Through universal MFA, service account coverage, and…, policies can be qualified or renewed faster. This allows organizations to meet insurer deadlines in days instead of months. Streamlined coverage pathways generate time and administrative resource savings, which can be used to negotiate for better terms and premiums. 

Operational Disruption Minimization 

Operational interruption is further minimized because Silverfort, in contrast with other MFA vendors, operates agentlessly and without the use of proxies. This allows for deployment in production environments without downtime, system alterations, or requiring lengthy rollouts and end-user retraining. Identity teams can activate robust cross-domain controls, enabling workload productivity to be sustained while simultaneously increasing security. 

Enhanced Competitive Advantage 

Displaying proactive identity security measures with Silverfort strengthens risk reduction claims. Underwriters now have tangible evidence in unified solutions addressing MFA gaps and service account exposure, which translates to better premiums and increased coverage limits.

Case Study: The Cyber Insurance Partner Ecosystem

The collaboration between Silverfort and global insurance broker Howden demonstrates the benefits of integrated identity security. Silverfort’s integration into Howden’s Cyber+ offering enables SMB clients to qualify for cyber policies to beauto-approvedl, receive better terms, and gain ongoing risk management support. Howden’s clients with Silverfort benefits report:

• Faster Underwriting Reviews – immediate proof of MFA and identity controls
• Lower Deductibles & Premiums – reduced risk profile recognized by underwriters
• Continuous Compliance – enduring status coverage with automated policy-compliance monitoring

Step 1: Environment Assessment

Perform a discovery scan to take stock of all human and non-human identities across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid systems, and aggregate identities into a comprehensive inventory.

Step 2: Deployment & Integration

Use Silverfort’s agentless installation for seamless integration with Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, and other IAM systems to streamline workflows and eliminate disruption to business operations.

Step 3: Policy Configuration

Update adaptive MFA policies to meet the requirements change by the underwriters’ checklist as applicable for remote access, admin, and service accounts.

Step 4: Validation & Reporting

Exhibit compliance with all policy requirements and streamline underwriter reviews using compliance artifacts generated for the requisite documentation.

Step 5: Active Monitoring

Keep identity threat detection with real-time alerting and automated shutdown of risky authentication to non-permissioned systems access attempts 24/7.

Best Practices for Maximizing Coverage

• Align Policies Early: Work with your broker during the policy negotiation phase to clarify the broker-specific configuration prerequisites.
• Leverage Reporting: Use the logs and compliance reports of Silverfort as proof of controls to leverage reporting.
• Review Annually: Adapt and modify Silverfort policies to ensure continuous compliance as regulatory requirements from the insurer change.

Conclusion

By embracing Silverfort, organizations gain comprehensive cyber insurance coverage while adopting a unified identity security platform with extensive multi-factor authentication coverage, complete service account and automated account control, and advanced, agent-free, real-time threat prevention devoid of system modifications or intricate setups. Silverfort surpasses underwriter expectations, guaranteeing policy qualification, renewal, and enhanced negotiation leverage, which reduces premiums while boosting the overall security posture. In the domain of cyber risk mitigation alongside the preservation of financial health, Silverfort delivers comprehensive coverage and confidence aligned with the demands of contemporary cyber insurance.