Rebuilding trust in cyber insurance: closing the gap between assumption and evidence

Cyber insurance has become a business essential.

Over the past five years, the market has tripled in value, and premiums have risen sharply as ransomware and other cyberattacks drive up payouts.

At the same time, obtaining cover has become more challenging.

In response, insurers are demanding stronger evidence of security controls, creating a clear, externally validated “minimum standard” for security teams.

While necessary, this baseline is only a starting point.

True resilience depends not just on having controls in place, but on how effectively they are implemented and whether the data guiding them is accurate and complete.

The visibility challenge

One of the biggest hurdles in cyber insurance is that most organizations simply don’t know the full extent of their assets or the status of their controls.

Cyber insurance is still relatively young, only 25–30 years old, and its frameworks and risk models are evolving alongside a fast-changing threat landscape. At the same time, IT environments are growing in complexity.

Tools that measure control effectiveness often know the locations of deployed controls but can’t detect what is missing. The result is partial visibility, and partial trust.

Breaches don’t happen because organizations lack technology or expertise; they occur because controls aren’t deployed effectively, or their performance isn’t visible to those responsible.

Asset inventories go stale, privileged access management can be bypassed, vulnerability scanners miss endpoints, and patching systems fail to reach all devices.

Without clear insight into what exists, where controls are applied, and whether they function as intended, organizations cannot make informed, risk-based decisions. Even the most sophisticated security programs can create a false sense of safety if they cannot see what they do not cover.

Aligning cyber resilience with insurance

Insurers and insureds share the goal of minimizing loss, but their priorities don’t always align. Insurers focus on preventing breaches and limiting payouts, while organizations aim to manage risk within their appetite – which varies by sector, geography, and business model.

Cyber insurance requirements provide a useful floor, but true resilience demands more than checklists.

CISOs bridge this gap by ensuring critical business services continue operating during an incident, rather than attempting to prevent every possible breach. This requires comprehensive coverage across all assets and confidence that controls are functioning effectively.

A SIEM that isn’t tuned to the organization's threat profile, or MFA that isn’t enforced everywhere, leaves high-risk gaps and blind spots.

Organizations benefit from a system of record that provides reliable, continuous insight into which assets exist, which controls are deployed, and how effectively they are operating. This enables CISOs to prioritize remediation, allocate resources based on business impact, and provide evidence to insurers and regulators.

By moving from assumption to evidence, cyber insurance becomes more than a safety net; it supports accountability, aligns operational priorities with risk management, and allows organizations to demonstrate true resilience.

CISOs also translate technical posture into business language, helping boards and executives understand risk, cover limits, and strategic investments. In this way, cyber insurance validates governance and reinforces organizational accountability.

From minimum standards to proactive risk management

Focusing on individual controls is not enough. Multi-factor authentication, regular patching, phishing awareness, and third-party risk management are all important, but resilience depends on seeing the system as a whole.

Just as a home relies on smoke detectors, fire alarms, and sprinklers to stay safe, organizations rely on multiple controls to manage risk. Any one failure can lead to an incident, but lasting protection comes from all controls working effectively in concert.

CISOs that map controls to critical assets and business services, test effectiveness, and continuously monitor deployment build trust with insurers, regulators, and stakeholders, and shifts organizations from minimum standards to continuous improvement, where security investments align with actual business risk.

Cyber insurance evolves from a reactive payout mechanism into a strategic enabler, incentivizing better practices and helping organizations stay ahead of a constantly changing threat landscape.

Standards and regulations, including NIS2 and DORA, provide benchmarks and governance frameworks, but compliance alone is insufficient. Organizations benefit from demonstrating that controls are effectively deployed, risks are actively monitored, and critical business services are protected.

Evidence-based oversight and continuous insight are essential for bridging the gap between assumption and reality.

Turning insight into resilience

Cyber insurance can only deliver on its promise when assumptions are replaced with evidence. Visibility and evidence of cyber posture are increasingly important for organizations, while insurers rely on reliable, continuous data to inform decisions.

Clear insight into assets and controls provides a single source of truth, aligning technical deployment with business priorities and enabling informed decisions.

By closing the gap between assumption and evidence, cyber insurance shifts from a reactive safety net to a proactive enabler of resilience.

Organizations that prioritize visibility, effective governance, and continuous improvement can maintain critical functions, protect customers, and thrive even when incidents occur – turning insurance into a tool that reinforces accountability and confidence across the digital economy.

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