How cyber insurers are modernizing risk with cloud data – News

As attacks escalate, cyber insurers and cloud providers are rethinking how risk is measured, priced and managed.

Google Cloud is expanding its Risk Protection Program with two new partners, Beazley PLC and Chubb INA International Holdings Ltd., alongside its founding partner, Munich Re. Designed to offer discounted coverage based on an organization’s actual security posture, the program pairs verified cloud controls with modern underwriting to reduce risk and build customer trust, according to Monica Shokrai (pictured, right), head of business risk and insurance for Google Cloud at Google.

“When we think about insurance, it’s more part of the holistic approach to how we think our customers should think about security ultimately driving down risk as much as they can,” Shokrai said. “But when there’s residual risk, having options through insurance to cover that.”

Shokrai and Matt Prevost (left), executive vice president and chief underwriting officer for global cyber at Chubb, spoke with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and Savannah Peterson at Google Cloud Next, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Google Cloud’s expanded Risk Protection Program, modern cyber insurance challenges and the program’s role as a key market differentiator. (* Disclosure below.)

Cyber insurers lean on cloud data to modernize risk

The program’s expansion signals Google Cloud’s growing influence on the insurance market, which has long struggled with outdated intake forms, data silos and limited visibility into modern threat patterns. By offering insurers real-time telemetry and security insights directly from the cloud environment, Google Cloud helps modernize cyber underwriting, according to Prevost.

“As advanced as underwriting has become … most markets have underwriting models that are fed or infused with threat intelligence similar to that from Mandiant or the Google Cloud team,” Prevost said. “Our underwriting process aligns to those things that cause losses.”

The latest iteration of Google’s Risk Protection Program reflects a shift from what the company calls a “shared responsibility” model to one of “shared fate,” in which the cloud provider takes a more active role in reducing risk for customers. That includes helping customers demonstrate secure cloud posture and partnering with cyber insurers to translate that into better coverage, according to Shokrai.

“One of the things that we’re doing with the program is driving us to a place where there’s more automated underwriting and there’s an ability for the same metrics that a [chief information security officer] is looking at to manage their own risk,” she said. “Those same metrics are being used by the cyber insurance industry.”

Cyber insurers also benefit from the data. Chubb’s internal threat intelligence team collaborated with Google Cloud to develop a list of security controls that meaningfully reduce both the frequency and severity of breaches. That list helps insurers better price policies and helps Google customers identify which controls genuinely matter, according to Prevost

“Instead of a subjective control, we now have an objective control that continuously changes over time,” he said. “That’s what is valuable to underwriting and valuable to us as we underwrite risks.”

The partnership is also expanding globally, making the program available to customers in over 30 countries and across all company sizes. Small and midsize businesses, often under-resourced in cybersecurity, stand to benefit most from the built-in protection Google Cloud offers — something insurers are beginning to quantify, according to Shokrai.

“The insurance industry is starting to come up with these statistics that say that Google Cloud customers have less claims than other customers,” she said. “One is if you’re using Google Workspace versus competitors, you have 54% less claims. That technology use matters, especially for SMBs that don’t have dedicated big security teams. For Google Cloud, we got a statistic from Cowbell that was 28% less frequency for Google Cloud users versus others.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of News’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Google Cloud Next:

(* Disclosure: Google Cloud sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Google Cloud nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)

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