2025 Prediction: Cyber Insurance Drives Cyber Resilience 

The cyber insurance industry is evolving through the emergence of a wave of new InsurTech organizations. Inspired by the FinTech movement in the financial services sector, the cyber insurance industry is following in those footsteps by applying technology innovation to the antiquated process of surveys and questionnaires used to determine risk and write policies.  

InsurTech organizations are using technology to assess the external attack surface of their insureds the same way that a cyber threat actor would look at their attack surface to find a weakness they can exploit. This technology-driven movement in the cyber insurance industry drives efficiency and accuracy in determining risk, which enables the insurer to underwrite better policies, set better premiums, reduce the cost of claims and ultimately achieve a better book of business for cyber insurance. 

The Role of InsurTech in Cybersecurity Services 

But it does not stop there. InsurTech organizations are moving beyond cyber insurance with the introduction of cybersecurity advisory services to their portfolio, positioning themselves as a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). InsurTech providers now bundle cyber insurance with cybersecurity services, including: 

• Incident Response (IR) 
• Managed Detection and Response (MDR) 
• Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)  

By offering IR and MDR services to policy holders, InsurTech’s create this virtuous cycle that benefits both the insurer and their insureds.  

Benefits for Insurers and Insureds 

For Insurers: 

• Improved Risk Insight: By managing security on behalf of insureds, insurers gain insight into actual risk and take proactive steps toward increasing cyber resilience. 
• Reduced Claims: Stronger security measures reduce the likelihood of successful cyberattacks. 

For Insureds: 

• Simplified Purchasing: Combining cyber insurance and security services into one transaction. 
• Cost Savings: Reduced premiums and improved policy terms. 
• Enhanced Cyber Resilience: Security defenses hardened by expert insurers. 

This is especially true for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which often lack the resources to properly secure their environments. The ability to purchase both cyber insurance and security services from a single provider is particularly attractive to SMBs, a significant portion of the InsurTech’s business. 

The prediction is based on this new emerging category in the Gartner Hype Cycle known as Continuous Threat Exposure Management or CTEM *.  

Understanding true threat exposure goes beyond looking only at the external attack surface. By implementing exposure management and validation solutions, you gain a much more complete and in-depth view of an organization's exposure risk based on: 

1. Threat intelligence to bring insight to know what threat actors are actively targeting your industry and region. 
2. Vulnerability management to know what vulnerabilities and exploits exist within your environment. 
3. Attack path visualization to understand what paths exist to exploit those vulnerabilities to gain access to your critical IT assets. 
4. Exposure validation to highlight when your compensating security controls will actually block a threat trying to exploit those vulnerabilities on that path. 

By understanding your true threat exposure, InsurTech’s can take the virtuous cycle to a whole new level. Now they will have much deeper insight to focus their attention on areas of true risk to the business. This will make the insured more resilient against the latest cyber attacks which is ultimately better for the cyber insurance business. 

In short, the cyber insurance industry will drive their clients to be more cyber resilient and less reliant on their cyber insurance policy. It’s just better for business!