As an insurance agency, you’re in the business of managing risk. You help clients uncover hidden vulnerabilities and protect themselves with the right policies. But here’s the question: are you doing the same for your own business?
One category of risk is rising faster than most insurance leaders expect: cybersecurity. In today’s world, insurance agencies themselves are quickly becoming prime targets.
Why? Probably because, as McKinsey & Company notes, “Insurers have access to large amounts of sensitive data that need protection. Among them are health and medical records, lists of insured items and properties, and wealth and assets under management.”
To keep your agency protected, you need insurance IT support. Being able to rely on an in-house team or expert partner will provide you with the resources and scalability you need to help you focus on 3 often-overlooked cybersecurity risks: internal, external, and third-party. Let’s break those down.
Internal Risks
Most internal IT risks don’t stem from sabotage. Instead, they result from simple human error. A well-meaning employee might misaddress an email or copy sensitive data to the wrong document. Another might screenshot client data to review over the weekend, unintentionally exposing it to an unsecured environment.
Outdated software is another major concern because unpatched systems can open backdoors for attackers. Verizon’s“2024 Data Breach Investigations Report” found a 180% increase in breaches tied to vulnerability exploitation, which makes patching more important for insurance security than ever.
How to protect your agency:
- Enforce regular patching and updates. An IT Managed Services Provider (MSP) can help automate this process across all devices, so no one forgets.
- Lock down data access and enforce the principle of least privilege. Encrypt everything, maintain audit trails, and ensure only necessary users have access.
- Train your staff to understand the risks associated with both approved internal systems and unauthorized “shadow IT” tools they might be tempted to use.
External Risks
Threats from outside your organization are more aggressive and varied than ever. Some of the most common include:
- Malware, such as ransomware, which your employees can unknowingly download and activate.
- Phishing, in which fake websites or text messages trick users into revealing their login credentials (typically).
- Social engineering, where bad actors impersonate trusted individuals like your CEO or your bank, so they can gain data access or wire transfer approvals.
Then there’s your office tech. IoT devices like smart thermostats and smart speakers connect to the internet, but many companies are still using their devices’ default administrative passwords and outdated firmware. Hackers can exploit these weak spots as backdoors into your systems — and they do so quite often. According to a Symantec finding quoted by Audit Board, IoT devices face an average of 5,200 attacks per month, including scans and automated attempts.
How to address this risk:
- Ongoing cybersecurity training is essential. Don’t just host a single session, conduct tabletop exercises and run security awareness trainings featuring real-world phishing simulations. With these, you can test (and improve) your team’s responses.
- A qualified MSP with insurance IT support expertise can help you manage your training, so you can ensure your team’s skills stay sharp. They can also help ferret out your vulnerabilities before attackers find them.
Third-Party Risks
Third-party vendors are a growing risk, especially in insurance, where agencies may work with dozens of external providers. You can’t always know what your partners are doing with your data, and often, they don’t know either.
A 2024 survey by the CyberRisk AllianceandAuditBoard found that 54% of organizations had suffered one or more security incidents tied to a third party. A 2025 Risk & Insurance article goes even further, stating, “59% of all reported breaches [by insurance-related companies] involved third parties.” This figure far surpasses any other industry analyzed. Clearly, cybercriminals are noticing —and exploiting— the growing disconnect between insurance and cybersecurity, as well as the opportunity that this presents them.
But it’s not just your partners you need to worry about. Even your software vendors pose an increasing concern. The CyberRisk Alliance / AuditBoard survey highlighted them as a primary source of third-party breaches.
How to defend against third-party threats:
- Review every third-party contract for clear cybersecurity requirements, and hold vendors accountable to them.
- Ask for proof of compliance. Reputable vendors should have certifications like SOC 2 and documented employee training protocols.
- When appropriate, train your vendors in the same cybersecurity protocols you use internally.
- Ask what software your partners rely on and vet it like you would your own. If you wouldn’t trust it yourself, reconsider the relationship.
Insurance-specific Cyber Risk
While as an insurance provider you face many of the same cyber risks internally and externally as with any other professional services firm, there are additional IT challenges you need to watch out for. The data of your customers, from personal to financial information, is one of the biggest concerns by far when it comes to cybersecurity, for both your clients and regulators.
Depending on the policies you provide and the markets you work with, you will be accessing records that contain potentially sensitive data and are likely heavily regulated for usage. This puts you under the crosshairs of different agencies and institutions holding you accountable for legislation and guidelines from NIST and HIPAA to the SHIELD Act, all which have strict obligations for preventing – and reporting – breaches.
Even without regulations, there remain plenty of reasons to be concerned about the safety of your customer information and other files. Hackers, natural disasters, technological disruptions – all create risk for your data’s well-being. That is not even mentioning the security protocols needed to make sure no one hijacks your communications internally or externally with clients.
Strategies for insurance IT needs:
- Stay on top of the latest data privacy regulations for financial services, as well as for healthcare or any other industry you serve.
- Back up data frequently, and in several locations (in the cloud is optimal).
- Inform and train your team to watch out for common scammer tricks for wire payments, etc.
- Implement MFA, EDR and other IT solutions and services recommended by FINRA and other regulatory bodies
Would You Benefit from Insurance IT Support?
Security in insurance agencies has outgrown the physical boundaries of the office. It’s no longer just about locks and fences. In today’s world, any employee could carry vulnerable data on their laptop or access sensitive information on a mobile device. This creates real financial risk for you, as well as reputational risk.
The CyberRisk Alliance/ AuditBoardsurvey found that two-thirds of companies had to deal with real financial impacts from third-party attacks. And according to McKinsey, the reputational cost of a cyberattack or data breach can be sky high, too: rising fines, business losses, remediation costs, and public trust fallout are all part of the equation.
Trust is your agency’s foundation, and reputational damage is often the most expensive to repair. That means now is the time to act, before it’s too late. As Dr. Ann Cavoukian, former Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, put it: “Data privacy is not just a compliance exercise. It’s about building trust with customers and demonstrating a commitment to protecting their data.”
Partnering with an MSP that specializes in insurance IT support can give your agency the tools it needs to:
- Identify and mitigate hidden risks: internal, external, and third-party
- Strengthen your data governance and security posture
- Build your clients’ confidence that your systems —and their data— are protected
Ready to get ahead of cyberthreats before they get ahead of you? SWK Technologies can help.