Tag: News

SecondSight Raises Financing, Launches Insurance Industry’s First AI-Driven Platform for ‘Inside Out’ Underwriting 

• First AI-driven platform that brings telematics to digital risk

• Enabling true digital risk to be discovered and quantified in ways not possible before

• Enabling continuous digital risk intelligence and making being uninsurable for cyber a thing of the past

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., October 12, 2022 — SecondSight (www.secondsight.ai) today came out of stealth with the launch of the insurance industry’s first AI-driven platform for ‘inside-out’ underwriting and an oversubscribed $3 million seed round of financing led by Tim Crown (co-founder of Insight Enterprises) with participation from Indiana Ventures, Cook Ventures, and Flywheel Fund, among other investors. A more comprehensive solution for current market needs, SecondSight is the first AI-driven platform that brings telematics to digital risk. With a rapidly growing customer roster, SecondSight expects the new funding to accelerate market adoption and impact to the cyber insurance industry. 

In a world where ransomware attacks surpass $7.5 billion annually and new cyberattacks occur every 39 seconds, businesses today are constantly vulnerable to unseen threats. As the digital risk grows, so does complexity, making it harder to obtain cyber insurance to hedge against those risks, with a majority of businesses in North America either uninsured or underinsured against skyrocketing growth of ransomware attacks and other cyber threats. More than 80% of cyber insurance applications today are denied, standards for underwriting are becoming more stringent, and there’s an increased need to accurately measure the true digital risk and severity that lives within an organization. 

“The cyber insurance gap is growing and the underwriting process for cyber insurance is getting increasingly more technical and time-consuming as requirements for getting coverage increase in complexity,” said Reuben Vandeventer, CEO and founder of SecondSight. “SecondSight was created to help businesses make sense of their digital assets — and find the true digital risk and value in them. Before SecondSight, the marketplace has had a million different viewpoints on cybersecurity and digital risk. SecondSight recognizes that cybersecurity and true digital risk are really about assets and liabilities. Digital risk is only meaningful and actionable for business stakeholders when it’s connected to the bottom line. We founded SecondSight to offer a fundamentally different approach to underwriting that connects the entire digital risk ecosystem while offering a powerful autonomous system.”

With SecondSight’s platform for ‘inside-out’ underwriting, businesses and cyber insurance providers can for the first time see the true digital risk with complete clarity, enabling cyber insurance providers to be able to quantify risk severity based on the digital assets and liabilities of an organization. SecondSight’s platform autonomously discovers, classifies and analyzes an organization’s entire landscape of digital assets, the unique risk profile for each digital asset across thousands of different risk factors, and the real business costs that would be incurred if a digital asset was compromised. 

SecondSight goes both broader and deeper than external risk control audits to inventory and classify all digital assets, analyze thousands of facets of risk, and calculate dollarized impact. Within a matter of days, businesses can have a high-resolution view of its digital assets and liabilities — and an accurate picture of how much risk exists and exactly where it lives. What traditionally takes the industry weeks to compile takes SecondSight a matter of days — well above the industry average rate.

“At a time when cyber losses are growing at 50 percent per year but less than one percent of the global cyber losses are insured, SecondSight has built an industry-first solution that is poised to transform digital risk management and cyber insurance for the entire digital risk ecosystem in ways that have not been possible before,” added Vandeventer. “From businesses to cyber insurance providers, SecondSight enables a 360 degree picture of digital assets and unprecedented visibility into true digital risk.” 

About SecondSight

SecondSight is re-imagining how digital risk is discovered, quantified, hedged and insured with the industry’s first AI-driven platform for digital risk management and cyber underwriting that enables unprecedented, “always-on” views into the true digital risk that lives in a business. Helmed by a seasoned leadership team with deep experience in data science, insurance and asset management backgrounds from Allstate, Bridgewater Associates, Cloudera and Informatica, SecondSight has developed the insurance industry’s first AI-driven platform for “inside out” underwriting. SecondSight connects the entire digital risk ecosystem — creating shared understanding around True Digital Risk and a common ground for better collaboration between businesses, carriers, brokers, and the entire digital risk ecosystem.

 

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221012005483/en/SecondSight-Raises-Financing-Launches-Insurance-Industry%E2%80%99s-First-AI-Driven-Platform-for-%E2%80%98Inside-Out%E2%80%99-Underwriting

The cyber insurance market is still in its infancy — and, many say, first-generation solutions are being constrained by tech debt and legacy thinking. 

While ransomware and other cyberattacks continue to rise in both frequency and cost, many organizations are underinsured or uninsured altogether against cyberthreats. Not for lack of trying; as underwriting evolves and becomes more complex, technical and time-consuming, many applications are simply denied. 

This all requires a whole new approach to risk assessment: Underwriters need mechanisms to measure the true digital risk that “lives within an organization,” said Reuben Vandeventer, CEO of Indiana-based startup SecondSight.

His company aims to provide this: The company today emerged from stealth with $3 million in seed funding, offering what it calls the industry’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-driven platform for “inside-out” underwriting.

“SecondSight recognizes that cybersecurity and true digital risk are really about assets and liabilities,” said Vandeventer. “Digital risk is only meaningful and actionable for business stakeholders when it’s connected to the bottom line.”

Cyber insurance = A hard market

According to a 2021 report from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the cybersecurity insurance market — including both U.S. domiciled insurers and alien surplus lines insurers writing business in the U.S. — was worth roughly $4.1 billion in direct written premiums in 2020. This reflects a 29.1% jump from the prior year.

Meanwhile, insurers writing standalone cyber insurance products reported approximately $2.58 billion in direct written premiums. Those writing cybersecurity insurance as part of a package policy reported roughly $1.49 billion in direct written premiums.

And, the market is prime for even more growth: According to Markets and Markets, the cyber insurance market size will grow from an estimated $11.9 billion in 2022 to $29.2 billion by 2027, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 20%. 

The main drivers, according to the firm, are the “rapid surge” of cybersecurity incidents coupled with an increase in mandatory cybersecurity regulations and legislations. However, the firm points out, organizations are restrained by soaring cyber insurance costs.

“The private equity world is really saying that the cyber insurance market is likely a 10-year hard market,” said Vandeventer — meaning it will continue on a path of significant, year-over-year growth. 

‘Inside-out’ and ‘outside-in’ combined

The problem, he said, is that existing players in the risk-quantification category — BitSight, Prevalent, RedSeal and SecurityScorecard, for example — model risk from outside the firewall. 

With this “outside-in” approach, the primary concern is preventing access at the edge of the network, and it largely involves human-requested input about risk controls. 

But, “this stance no longer serves the nature of the market,” said Vandeventer, who previously founded OpenINSIGHTS and Data Clairvoyance Group, and served as chief data officer for Bridgewater Associates and CNO Financial Group. 

SecondSight performs what it calls “inside-out” methods, as well as “outside-in.” The company brings telematics to digital risk, taking human observation out of the process by enabling system-to-system communication for direct observation of risk behaviors in real time. It could be compared to Allstate’s Drivewise program, a telematics app that tracks driving habits. 

This shows an organization’s “true digital risk” so that cyber insurance providers can quantify risk severity based on an organization’s digital assets and liabilities, said Vandeventer. 

“If you’re outside the firewall, you have no mathematical ability to understand digital asset P&L,” he said. Thus, “inside-out and outside-in both need to be used.”

Autonomous protection

As he explained, the cyber insurance company’s platform doesn’t require a learning cycle; it autonomously discovers, classifies and analyzes an organization’s “entire landscape of digital assets,” the unique risk profile for each asset across thousands of risk factors, and the real business costs that would be incurred if a digital asset was compromised. 

AI modeling takes place right next to the data and metadata. More than 287 different models or algorithms — learning-based, deep learning, machine learning (ML) and others topological in nature — identify, classify and map digital assets in the ecosystem, he said. 

The platform is directly integrated with SaaS applications and deploys agents and collectors into PaaS, IaaS and on-premise legacy environments. This edge-compute auto-discovery is combined with ongoing auto-correlation of digital assets to the insured’s business model.

What traditionally takes other companies weeks to compile is completed by SecondSight in mere days — with as accurate as 92% accuracy rate, according to Vandeventer. 

“Carriers can correlate digital assets to profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet metrics,” he said. 

He pointed out that, in U.S. markets, the average mean time of recovery after a ransomware attack is 28 days. “That’s 28 days that operations are down,” he said. The “double-whammy” is that organizations have 28 days of lost revenue, but 28 days of still paying salaries and other bills. 

Using SecondSight metrics, organizations can identify which digital assets are more correlated to production and operations, and focus on optimizing mean time and recovery of those specific assets, Vandeventer explained. They can then add such protections as air-gapped backup, extended detection and response (XDR), endpoint detection and response (EDR), multifactor authentication (MFA) and two-factor authentication. 

Cyber insurance market is in its infancy

While with Allstate, Vandeventer’s big observation was that cyber insurance and its current manifestation wasn’t behaving like a mature or real insurance product, he said. 

“The insurance industry wasn’t treating it like real insurance,” he said. 

This is because the insurance class was brought to market with a bare minimum of underwriting. Its market share grew quickly, allowing carriers to make significant profit. 

Now, it’s pure economics: With claims spiking post-pandemic, providers have been binding fewer policies while simultaneously taking action to re-engineer underwriting. 

SecondSight is purposely existing stealth as the industry redefines standards, he said. The company is supported by several carriers and MGAs (wholesale brokers) and will soon announce a partnership with the largest cyber insurance wholesale broker in North America. 

The seed round, which will be used to advance go-to-market efforts, was led by Tim Crown (cofounder of Insight Enterprises), with participation from Indiana Ventures, Cook Ventures and Flywheel Fund.

 

Source: https://venturebeat.com/security/secondsight-enters-cyber-insurance-market-with-ai-driven-platform-for-inside-out-underwriting/amp/

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Bloomington-based startup SecondSight has secured a more than $3 million seed round of funding to advance the company’s AI platform to help businesses who get hit by ransomware attacks.

The company says the system helps businesses to better understand their digital assets and assess their risk and value when they file a claim with their insurance carrier.

“Digital risk is only meaningful and actionable for business stakeholders when it’s connected to the bottom line,” said Reuben Vandeventer, CEO and founder of SecondSight.

Vandeventer says the platform takes an ‘inside-out’ approach for underwriting and gives businesses a clearer picture of the assets. They say the technology allows cyber insurance providers to be able to quantify risk severity and calculate loss.

“SecondSight recognizes that cybersecurity and true digital risk are really about assets and liabilities,” said Vandeventer, adding there’s an increased need to accurately measure the true digital risk and severity that lives within an organization.

The company says ransomware attacks surpass $7.5 billion annually and businesses are constantly vulnerable to unseen threats. The company says as the digital risk grows, so does complexity, making it harder to obtain cyber insurance to hedge against those risks.

SecondSight says a majority of businesses in North America either uninsured or underinsured against skyrocketing growth of ransomware attacks and other cyber threats.

The company says the financing was led by Tim Crown, co-founder of Insight Enterprises (Nasdaq: NSIT), an Arizona-based global technology company. Other investors include Indiana Ventures, Cook Ventures, and Flywheel Fund.

The company currently has 20 employees and is looking to double employee levels over the next year hs for product management, UX design, engineering, and data science.

 

Source: https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/3m-seed-round-for-bloomington-startup

VALHALLA, N.Y., Sept. 29, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — USI Insurance Services (“USI”), a world leader in risk management, employee benefit and retirement consulting, today announced the expansion of its proprietary cyber Answerlytics™ solution platform to include a total of 14 industry-leading cyber risk management providers focused on helping clients proactively reduce their exposure to financial risk from urgent cyber vulnerabilities and emergent threats.

Amid a challenging underwriting environment, the gap between emerging cyber threats, business vulnerabilities and the next generation of cyber solutions and service providers is costing organizations when it comes to financial losses. As cyber incidents continue to cause severe losses, insurers are no longer satisfied with rudimentary pre-event risk mitigation and demand advanced risk controls to consider quoting cyber insurance coverage. Answerlytics is helping to close this gap by providing USI clients prioritized and discounted access to an expanded network of Answerlytics Curated Providers, including BlackOps Partners, Corvid, CyberSafe, Cybir, Designed Privacy, Fisher Broyles LLP, Fortress SRM, GoBox, Kroll, LastPass, LIFARS – a SecurityScorecard Company, Second Sight, Spencer Fane LLP and Tracepoint. These providers were selected to help USI clients proactively address critical vulnerabilities and to establish and maintain the proper controls and practices on which cyber underwriters focus.

“Launched in 2021, Answerlytics is a truly differentiated cyber offering from USI that is benefiting our clients and carrier partners through improved risk evaluation, risk mitigation and risk presentation to carriers,” stated Nadia Hoyte, national cyber practice leader for USI. “Traditional cyber insurance and risk mitigation tools often fail to address emergent risks, which is why we are proud to partner with some of the industry’s leading providers to offer our clients preferred access to cutting-edge risk management solutions designed to mitigate costly coverage gaps and cyber vulnerabilities.”

Ben Demonte, COO in the Cyber Risk practice at Kroll, an Answerlytics Curated Provider, said: “The risk of a cyberattack is only increasing as vulnerabilities mount and new cyber threats continue to emerge. In our recent Quarterly Threat Landscape report, we saw the return of ransomware as it topped the charts as the most common cyber incident. We also identified external remote services – which many of us now rely on in a hybrid working world – as a primary vector for attack, up 700% on the previous quarter. We’re delighted to be working with USI to bridge the gap between responding to this threat environment and what’s required to meet insurance requirements. No one should feel powerless in the face of a cyberattack.”

David Hallstrom, national cyber advisor for USI, added: “We chose our Answerlytics Curated Providers to help our clients receive optimal cyber insurance terms, streamline the cyber procurement process and improve their cyber risk knowledge, including access to weekly threat updates. Additionally, these providers have agreed to offer USI clients prioritized access to their cutting-edge risk management solutions at discounted rates.”

In recognition of Cybersecurity Awareness Month this October, USI is partnering with a select group of Answerlytics Curated Providers to host a series of complimentary industry-specific cyber market update webinars covering urgent and emerging cyber risks specific to the manufacturing, healthcare, real estate and construction industries. For complete details and to register, visit: https://bit.ly/3Lxxpi5

To learn more about USI’s Cyber Answerlytics Solution Platform, contact your local USI representative or visit: https://info.usi.com/Answerlytics.html