PAM at the service of cyber insurance

Just as you would not drive a car without insurance, you would not want to take the risk of running your organisation without cyber security insurance.

Cyber security insurance has emerged as crucial for financial protection and risk mitigation in the event of a breach. To qualify for many policies, Privileged Access Management (PAM) plays a vital role. This article looks at how PAM can help you satisfy cyber insurance requirements, and what security benefits it brings to your organisation.

Why do we need cyber security insurance?

Cyber insurance was first introduced in 1997 and started to be adopted in the 2000s. It has since become a must for any organisation.

A data breach can have serious impacts, from financial fines to operational interruption. According to the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach is $4.35 million. Our article Can data breaches be avoided? has more on how to prevent one.

Cyber insurance therefore carries great value in limiting the financial impact of a security incident. With the rise of data breaches, having it is now essential.

What to look for in a cyber security insurance policy

Each policy covers a certain number of areas that could be affected by a breach. We recommend looking for the following points and making sure they are included in your organisation’s policy.

• Recovery and restoration. Cyber insurance will cover the necessary actions for data recovery. Make sure that the services, software and hardware needed are all included.
• Notification. In the case of a security incident you are required by law to notify your organisation’s stakeholders, customers and any impacted third party, as well as the official CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team). Ensure the policy covers all the costs of notifying those parties.
• Legal fines. A cyber insurance policy must cover legal fines and penalties. It is also important to include any compliance fees needed, depending on your sector of activity.
• Operational interruption. Many cyberattacks have resulted in business interruption and loss of revenue. This section of the policy is key to minimising your organisation’s losses.

How to apply for cyber insurance

Given the benefits of insuring your organisation against cyberthreats, and the increasing number of attacks, cyber-insurance companies are becoming increasingly demanding — particularly around a set of prerequisites. Those can cover what you have done to enable your personnel, such as putting the right cyber hygiene and best practices in place and raising employee awareness of cyber risk, as well as how you have equipped yourself with cybersecurity tools. Requirements vary by provider, but the minimum technologies required in most cyber-insurance policies include:

• Cyber-risk management tools.
• Endpoint protection (EDR).
• Active Directory protection.
• Secure backup and restore.
• Email security.
• Credential management.
• Vulnerability assessments.
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Web application firewall (WAF).
• Privileged Access Management (PAM).

All the areas listed above matter in demonstrating the solidity of your organisation’s cybersecurity to the insurance company. This article goes deeper on the last of them.

Why do you need Privileged Access Management?

What is PAM?

PAM is a cybersecurity solution used to secure access to your most critical assets by your most privileged users. Given the nature of their jobs, these users have access to sensitive data and are required to handle systems with powerful impact. A privileged access management solution guarantees complete visibility and control over their access.

How can you meet policy requirements with PAM?

• Authentication. Insurers require multi-factor authentication solutions, whose function is to verify a user’s identity and confirm the right person is behind the screen. Many PAM solutions provide built-in MFA to secure remote access for both internal admins and third parties.
• Access control. A privileged access management solution should be aligned with the principle of least privilege, which is based on the assumption that no user can be trusted. Using a PAM solution with a Zero Trust architecture ensures the by-design application of that principle — see our Zero Trust PAM page.
• Account management. Once the basis is established with a Zero Trust architecture coupled with MFA, it is important to look for security features that help you manage privileged sessions and accounts. Using them proves to the insurance company that you have a robust security strategy. PAM solutions let you manage all sessions: you can pre-configure your security alert level to detect any suspicious activity and automatically block the admin’s session, and you can configure access to a specific resource only with the approval of a supervisor, or within a certain period of time through just-in-time access.
• Audit and compliance. For compliance and regulatory purposes, session auditing is a key insurance requirement. With PAM it is crucial to have the recording feature, where sessions are saved in a video format, allowing you to comply, to check the source of any cyber incident, and to ease forensic analysis. Event and access log features help you build full reports and so have complete audit over your organisation’s systems.
• Credential management. The theft of privileged users’ credentials has been a main entry point for hackers, so it is not surprising that insurers ask organisations to have a solid password vault. PAM provides features such as password rotation and automatic injection, so your organisation’s credentials never have to be disclosed to external parties, nor to any internal admin who could leave the organisation at any moment.

Beyond meeting insurance requirements, PAM makes it easy to manage your privileged users and gives you a full view over your organisation’s systems.

What PAM adds to your organisation

Insurance companies are increasingly reluctant to provide full refunds in the case of an incident. And a data breach can have a significant impact on your organisation’s reputation, along with many other non-financial consequences.

For those reasons, compliance and meeting insurance requirements can be a serious opportunity to strengthen your organisation’s security and to do things right — and ultimately to boost your business performance.

To learn more about privileged access management, read our article How to choose your Privileged Access Management solution.

PAM as a Service: revolutionising your privileged account security

As conventional PAM solutions are expensive and hard to deploy, PAM as a Service emerges as the next-generation PAM, giving organisations the opportunity to secure their privileged accounts with a highly practical SaaS solution. With CyberElements there is no need to worry about finding the human resources to deploy a privileged access management solution: enable your platform in 3 minutes and pay only for simultaneously connected users.

Start now for free — create your account.