CyberCube
Empowering Cyber Insurers

Quantifying cyber risk often is a challenging task for organizations, owing to the complex nature of cyber operations and the increasing reliance on internet-connected technology. During underwriting risk insurance policies, it is also common for cyber insurers to encounter challenges that don’t exist in other lines of insurance.

Pascal Millaire, CEO of CyberCube, mentions that big data analytics can go a long way in helping insurers gain visibility into the metrics needed to assess risks accurately. There are two major things, he adds, are lacking in cyber insurance companies today. Firstly, many struggle with individual company cyber underwriting as they don’t have the acumen to examine the cyber risk accurately. Next, they don’t possess a model for cyber risk aggregation and managing catastrophic cyber events. “These challenges can only be addressed with a data-driven solution. Leveraging a cross-functional team consisting of experts in data science, cyber security, software engineering, actuarial modeling, and commercial insurance, we do data-driven analytics to identify cyber risk for insurers,” says Millaire.

CyberCube was formed in 2015 within Symantec to solve some of the most challenging issues for cyber insurers. Millaire comments, “Since February 2018 we are operating as a standalone company with continued access to Symantec data and resources.” The firm has also received funding from leading venture capitalists like ForgePoint Capital.

CyberCube offers a SaaS platform that aids insurers in cyber risk aggregation modeling and insurance underwriting.

CyberCube offers a SaaS platform that aids insurers in cyber risk aggregation modeling and insurance underwriting

The platform enhances the underwriting process by simplifying data collection across the insurance value chain. While developing the SaaS platform, CyberCube focused on three core principals. The first was to differentiate the source of data. “It was feasible for us to get sources of rich data because our company was formed within Symantec.” At Symantec, the firm built APIs upon Symantec’s security data, in point data, and also on the intelligence of Symantec’s security network. Next, the firm strived to ensure that its SaaS platform remained transparent and configurable for insurers. Lastly, CyberCube focused on bringing forth analytics favored to meet the unique and changing needs of insurers.

Millaire points out that it is imperative for insurers to have CEO-level understanding about the potential of balance sheet exposure. “Unless insurers can articulate the catastrophic cyber risk aggregation, cyber insurance won’t thrive long-term.” In one instance, the firm assisted a leading property and casualty insurer who despite having cyber insurance as one of its prominent lines of business lacked the expertise to properly understand the potential of risk exposure in its “cyber insurance book.” “We integrated our platform with their system and updated their portfolio to help them understand the risk of balance sheet exposure.”

Forging ahead, the firm intends to continue delivering best-in-market analytics tools to insurers and cater to some pressing needs of insurers in the cyber security space. “We are committed to enhancing all our sources of data and working on integrating data with other cybersecurity companies. In the months ahead, we envision addressing the needs of more and more insurers in the US and play a significant role in helping them achieve their business goals,” concludes Millaire.