Cyber insurance has become a boardroom conversation for most businesses, and understandably so. The risks continue to expand, and potential exposure is a significant threat, so having a policy in place feels like a responsible answer to both.
What’s less well understood is what that policy actually requires from your IT. Insurers have significantly raised their standards over time, and they’re now scrutinizing the technical controls behind every application, both at renewal and in the event of a claim. Cyber liability compliance has become a demonstrable standard instead of a declaration, and the gap between what a business reports and what it can actually evidence is increasingly where claims get denied.
This blog covers what insurers are now looking for from IT teams, where most businesses have gaps they don’t know about, and what staying covered actually requires in practice.
Insurers Are Asking Different Questions Now
For most of the last decade, qualifying for cyber insurance meant answering a questionnaire. Do you have antivirus software? Do you back up your data? A business could answer yes across the board and receive a policy with relatively little scrutiny applied to what those answers actually meant in practice.
But over time, the model has changed. Insurers have moved from self-reported declarations to evidence-based underwriting, and the shift has been significant. According to Marsh McLennan’s 2025 Cyber Insurance Market Report, 99% of applications now include specific questions about MFA implementation alone. That’s one control. The full list of what carriers are now verifying is considerably longer.
The IT compliance requirements most insurers now treat as non-negotiable include:
- Multi-factor authentication, enforced across all accounts and systems – not just activated
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR)
- Tested backup and recovery procedures, with documented results
- A formal incident response plan
- Access controls that follow least-privilege principles
Having these tools in place is a starting point. What underwriters increasingly want to see is documented evidence of how they’re deployed, monitored, and maintained. For businesses working toward regulatory compliance across multiple frameworks, the controls insurers require largely overlap with what those frameworks demand. The challenge is closing the gap between having something in place and being able to prove it.
Where Most Businesses Fall Short
Most businesses don’t discover their cyber insurance gaps during a compliance review. They typically discover them after an incident, when an insurer’s post-breach investigation reveals that the controls stated on the application weren’t fully in place at the time of the attack.
The assumption that partial implementation counts is one of the most common and costly mistakes in this space. It doesn’t. Insurers are specific about what they require, and the bar for what qualifies has risen considerably.
The three gaps that come up most consistently are:
MFA that isn’t fully enforced – Having multi-factor authentication available isn’t the same as having it enforced. Coalition’s 2024 Cyber Threat Index found that 82% of denied claims involved organizations without MFA fully implemented across their systems. Insurers require it active across email, VPN, cloud platforms, and all administrative accounts. Exceptions for senior staff or legacy systems are regularly cited during claim investigations.
Misrepresentation on the application – This is rarely intentional. IT teams answer security questions based on what they believe is in place, and post-breach investigations reveal a different picture. Industry data puts the overall claim rejection rate at over 40%, with undocumented or overstated controls consistently among the leading causes.
Backups that haven’t been tested – Many businesses have a backup process. Far fewer have documented evidence of a successful restore test, which is what insurers are now asking for. A backup that’s never been verified is not acceptable to an insurer.
For businesses without dedicated executive oversight of their security posture, a Virtual Chief Security Officer can provide the strategic visibility needed to identify these gaps before a carrier does.
What Audit-Ready Looks Like in Practice
The businesses that navigate cyber insurance renewals without disruption can do so because they treat insurer requirements as an ongoing operational standard, rather than something to address in the weeks before a renewal deadline. Getting ahead of the questions is considerably easier than answering them under pressure.
In practical terms, aligning IT posture with insurer expectations means working through the following:
- Close MFA gaps across email, VPN, cloud platforms, and all administrative accounts and document enforcement rather than simply confirming it’s active
- Confirm EDR coverage across every endpoint, verify that alerts are being monitored, and ensure response processes are documented
- Test backups and record the results – restore testing matters as much as the backup process itself
- Review and update the incident response plan, including who is responsible for what and how quickly notification obligations can be met
- Audit access controls to ensure least-privilege principles are applied and documented across the environment
For businesses with cloud infrastructure, cloud security and compliance deserve particular attention, as cloud platform access controls and configuration are increasingly prominent in underwriting questions.
The most important shift is treating this as preparation rather than remediation. Insurers are asking these questions. The only variable is whether a business has the answers ready before or after an incident.
Know Where You Stand Before Your Insurer Asks
A cyber insurance policy only delivers value if the claim gets paid. That depends entirely on whether the IT environment, at the time of an incident, matches what the business represented when it applied.
Cybersecurity compliance in Atlanta is increasingly shaped by what commercial insurers are asking their clients to demonstrate, and those requirements are only moving in one direction. The businesses that stay covered are the ones that work through their IT posture before renewal pressure or an incident forces the issue.
At ASC Group, we work alongside commercial insurance firms in Atlanta to understand the technical standards their clients are being asked to meet. If you’re not confident your current IT posture would hold up to an insurer’s review, that’s worth finding out now. You can get a better idea of where you stand by getting in touch with us today.
