How System Hardening can help you better meet the requirements of cyber insurers
It is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to obtain affordable, high-quality cyber insurance policies. One reason for this is that professional System Hardening is often not implemented. Do better!
Huge damage, high insurance sums
Cyber attacks on organizations, authorities, and companies have been increasing significantly for several years. Data theft, business interruptions, damage payments, and a major loss of image: the damage is getting worse and worse.
The costs of a data breach usually run into the millions, and affected companies sometimes slide into insolvency or bankruptcy.
Cyber insurers are also feeling the pinch: Demand is rising, but expenses are rising even faster. Many providers have incurred heavy losses over the years—and have responded accordingly:
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- They are scrutinizing applicants’ circumstances more critically than before.
- They are refusing to provide cyber insurance to companies due to the risk involved.
- They are reducing benefits or, in certain cases, no longer paying out at all.
- They are increasing their premiums, in some cases massively.
For your company, this means that if it wants to take out cyber insurance, it must expect higher costs and less coverage. Under certain circumstances, you may not even be able to obtain a policy.
If the worst comes to the worst – a successful cyberattack – your organization will probably be left to foot the entire bill. Can it afford that? Probably not…
What measures should you definitely take?
If you want to take out cyber insurance for your company, you usually have to fill out a questionnaire. The insurer uses this “checklist” to assess how well you currently secure your IT systems. If basic measures are not met, the risk increases. As a result, your company will not receive an insurance offer, or the conditions will be correspondingly high.
➡ Insurance companies expect you to comply with the state of the art. You can demonstrate this through audits and certifications, among other things. An important standard is ISO 27001.
➡ Among other things, this standard requires the Secure Configuration of your applications and operating systems – also known as System Hardening.
➡ Some cyber insurers even explicitly mention the measure of “Hardening” in their terms and conditions. Why? System Hardening is an essential preventive measure. With professional implementation, you close a large number of attack vectors.
➡ It is also important to note that cyber insurers want to see how you protect your systems. This means that the obligation to provide evidence is also one of the must-haves.
How can you achieve accepted System Hardening?
All IT managers know that protecting modern system landscapes is not only complicated, but also highly complex. Numerous organizational and technical measures work together to strengthen resilience. One of the central pillars of this is System Hardening.
Especially in large, heterogeneous IT environments, professional and sustainable Hardening requires a considerable amount of time. This makes it all the more important to have an efficiently designed process that intelligently integrates implementation, monitoring, and optimization and provides technical support.
This is exactly where Enforce Administrator comes in. With this hardening tool developed in Germany, you can perform automated System Hardening based on proven standards and with maximum efficiency.
⏬ Download: Enforce Administrator Product Brochure (PDF)
Do you have any questions?
Would you like to know more about System Hardening? Or would you like to know how you can implement automated System Hardening in your company? Contact us – our experts are happy to help!