Premiums · 4 min read
Strengthen Your Cybersecurity to Lower Your Premiums
You already know how this works with your building. Put in an alarm and a sprinkler system, and your property premium comes down. Cyber insurance works the same way, and most owners do not realize it.
The property insurance parallel
Think about insuring a store. The insurer looks at the risk of theft, fire, and flood, and you lower it with locks, alarms, and fire suppression. Less risk, fewer claims, better premium. Cyber is no different. The insurer looks at how likely you are to get hit and how bad it would be. Show them you have locked the doors, and they price you accordingly.
What insurers actually look at
When an underwriter prices your cyber policy, a few things carry most of the weight:
- Multi-factor authentication. Do you have MFA on email and remote access? This is the big one.
- Backups. Are they done regularly, tested, and kept separate?
- Staff awareness. Can your people spot a phishing email?
- Network security. Firewalls, endpoint protection, patching.
Tighten these and your perceived risk drops. Many insurers give better pricing or discounts for meeting a clear security bar. MFA alone shuts down a huge share of account-takeover claims, and underwriters know it.
It is not just about the premium
The savings are nice. The bigger point is that the same controls protect the business itself:
- They protect customer trust. A breach damages your reputation. Preventing one keeps your customers.
- They cut downtime. An attack stops you working and costs revenue. Controls reduce that.
- They keep you compliant. Good security lines up with what PIPEDA expects of you anyway.
Where to start
You do not need to spend a fortune. A practical order:
- Turn on MFA everywhere, especially email and anything with sensitive access.
- Train your team to spot phishing.
- Back up your data, test it, and keep a copy separate.
- Patch and update on a schedule.
- Get a risk assessment to find the gaps you cannot see.
The takeaway
Strong cyber controls do double duty. They lower your risk of an attack and they lower what you pay to insure against one. You would not leave the store unlocked overnight. Do not leave the digital doors open either. Talk to your broker about how your controls affect your policy, and start with the cheap, high-impact ones.
Frequently asked questions
Can better cybersecurity lower my cyber premium?
Often, yes. Insurers price on risk, so showing controls like MFA, backups, and EDR can improve both your terms and your price.
Which controls matter most to insurers?
Multi-factor authentication, tested backups, endpoint detection and response, and phishing-awareness training are the ones underwriters ask about most.
Is it worth investing in security just for the premium?
The premium savings help, but the bigger return is avoiding the incident itself, and qualifying for coverage you might otherwise be declined.
Not sure where your coverage stands?
Run the free Coverage Assessment, or book a no-pressure review and I'll read your actual policy and tell you exactly where the gaps are.
By J.R. Genua, CCIS, Certified Cyber Insurance Specialist and Registered Insurance Broker. Insurance services provided by St. Andrews Insurance Brokers Ltd.