State of the Insurance Market:
2025 Outlook

Multi-factor authentication (MFA): MFA uses a two-or-more-factor authentication verification system to give users access to accounts, applications, virtual private networks (VPN), and more. MFA goes beyond a username and password for additional verification, mitigating cyber threats.

Endpoint detection and response (EDR): EDR provides real-time visibility across all endpoint activity by detecting red flags, such as malicious behavior. Additionally, it can analyze endpoint data and respond to threats. EDR tools use AI technology to identify malicious behavior, and this is expected to increase.

Cybersecurity training: Implement security training to help employees recognize common cyber threats, such as phishing scams, social engineering, poor password hygiene, and other risks. It is preferable that training tools use analytics to help organizations determine which employees require retraining with respect to identifying email scams and using weak passwords.

Data backups: Perform frequent, secured, encrypted, and tested backups for important records and data to be stored offsite, including business contracts and licenses, meetings, patents, trademarks, shareholder stock records, and important documents.

Privileged access management (PAM): PAM mitigates the risk of privileged access. The core capabilities of PAM include the discovery of privileged accounts across multiple systems, infrastructure, and applications, credential management for privileged accounts, credential vaulting, and control of access to privileged accounts.

Email filtering and web security: Eliminating spam through a basic filtering system is a foundation of cybersecurity. Analyze emails for phishing and other red flags, before dumping them into a separate folder.

Patch management and vulnerability management: These work together to unveil and prioritize risks based on their individual threat level, as well as amend risks by automatically upgrading software to its most recent version.

Incident response and business continuity plans: Allows an organization’s IT team to detect any red flags and provide the time necessary to respond and recover from incidents, such as service outages, cyberattacks, or data loss.

Layered approach: Organizations should remember that cybersecurity is a layered approach and part of an overall risk management plan. Cyber insurance is a critical part of risk management.