Oceanwide, an Insurity company and developer of industry-leading, configurable, SaaS based insurance software, announced that Creechurch Underwriters, a leading Managing General Underwriter (MGU), is now in production with Oceanwide’s Cyber Risk Assessment Tool for assessing cyber risks for the company’s brokers and insureds.

With the Oceanwide solution, Creechurch will offer the assessment to consumers through their broker. Due to the ease of use offered with the tool, there is no need for additional training and no complicated registration.

To address its unique business needs, Creechurch will be adding a custom scoring and weighting model to the standard assessment, which will apply numerical values to responses as scores, not simply subjective responses recorded in a form.

With the Cyber Risk Assessment Tool’s ability to collect the scores, perform weighting across security domains and industry sectors, and aggregate assessment data, Creechurch will be able to better leverage data to gain a greater understanding of industry and organizational risks.

As a result, Creechurch will have an improved ability to tune its rating and premium calculations, providing superior benchmarking analysis of its customers.

Phil Baker, president, Creechurch, commented, "We selected the Oceanwide tool to help us better manage the unique challenges of cyber risk. The dimensions in measuring risks are far more exhaustive for cyber than for a traditional property and casualty insurance product."

Baker continued, "Coupled with an ever evolving threat matrix, the cyber risk assessment task is complex. Without any empirical evidence, building efficient and effective rating models and benchmarking analysis without a tool like Oceanwide’s is a shot in the dark at best."

"Creechurch is taking steps to better service its clients and get ahead of the competition by integrating cyber security assessment based on government recognized standards as part of the quoting process. Insurers, brokers and MGUs can best help organizations manage cyber risks by establishing and utilizing cyber security best practices. It just takes asking the right questions and getting everyone well educated – whether insurer, broker, MGU or the client," said Mark Orosz, chief security officer, Oceanwide.

"We are pleased that they have selected Oceanwide to help achieve their cyber risk assessment goals."

When offering a cyber risk insurance product, it’s important for insurers to leverage existing well established governmental or regulatory guidelines such as OSFI, NIST, and ENISA when assessing an insured.

Oceanwide’s Cyber Risk Assessment tool is designed to be flexible to adapt to different guidelines based on local requirements. The tool is a web-based solution which can be customized to accommodate country-specific regulatory standards and language requirements to make it easier for an insurer to improve its cybersecurity posture in real-time.

Leveraging Oceanwide’s Bridge, a highly-configurable core insurance administration solution, insurance companies can effectively assess any insured’s critical vulnerabilities and exposures to cyber-attacks via a clear, comprehensive executive summary presented after the initial assessment.