This article was produced in partnership with Intact Insurance.
David Saric, of Insurance Business, sat down with Steve Earle, president of Bauld Insurance and Chantal Falvo, business development manager, Partner Solutions Inc. to discuss how Bauld Insurance is amping up its cyber posture and why it is important for brokerages to be diligent about doing this.
Small and medium sized businesses, including insurance brokerages, are increasingly becoming the target of cyber-attacks. With the average cost of a data breach now at US$4.45 million, it’s imperative that all brokerages invest in proper cyber protection.
For Steve Earle, president of Bauld Insurance, a 30-employee independent brokerage serving customers across Nova Scotia, that investment is non-negotiable.
“Being a small business, you have to operate like a Swiss Army knife, handling sales, marketing and accounting,” Earle said.
“You’re used to doing everything on your own.”
But having a dedicated internal team to manage the ever-changing technology and cyber threat landscape is just not feasible for his brokerage – or most SMEs.
“I’m an insurance broker and not a tech or cybercrime expert,” Earle said.
Bauld Insurance bolsters its cyber posture by drawing on the expertise of Partner Solutions Inc. (PSI). A subsidiary of Intact Financial Corporation, the technology and cyber security firm focuses solely on the broker market.
For a brokerage, the number one priority is to mitigate the risk exposure of its clients, while providing excellent customer service.
That customer focus – the secret to any brokerage’s success – means it’s easy for internal risk mitigation to fall through the cracks.
“I think sometimes brokers are so busy looking after everybody else, they don’t have the time to focus on the security of their own business or addressing their own risks,” said Chantal Falvo, PSI’s business development manager.
But with four in five Canadian organizations reporting at least one cyber incident a year, the consequence of not paying attention to one’s own house can be disastrous – as too many brokerages have discovered recently.
Intact Insurance is Canada's largest home, auto and business insurance company, the choice of more than four million consumers. Its coast-to-coast presence and its strong relationship with insurance brokers mean the company can provide the outstanding service, comfort and continuity customers deserve. Intact Insurance is a member company of Intact Financial Corporation (TSX: IFC), the largest provider of property and casualty insurance in Canada and a leading provider of specialty insurance in North America.
Having done the work to bolster Bauld Insurance’s cyber posture with the support of an expert has helped Earle to “sleep better at night.”
“You get this feeling that you’re not on your own,” he said. “They’re helping us improve our cyber posture so that we can operate securely in an increasingly diverse threat landscape.
“This lets us focus on what we do best, which is helping customers.”
While cyber criminals are constantly expanding their attack repertoire, phishing and social engineering emails continue to form the basis of most successful cyberattacks.
“Email remains the most popular form of business communication so it’s no wonder that it’s the number one threat vector,” said Falvo.
“And it’s insidious. If these emails come when someone is distracted with other things, anyone can fall victim to these cyber-attacks.”
Current reports put the global number of daily phishing emails at 3.4 billion. Intact alone receives more than one million spam and phishing emails each month.
PSI counters this threat with robust cyber training for its broker clients, which includes sending employees phishing emails that test their awareness of social engineering techniques.
Earle knows first-hand how valuable this training is – and how necessary. A few days after booking a flight online, he received an email purportedly from the airline. Not thinking twice, he clicked the link.
“I don’t book flights that often – it looked legitimate,” he confessed.
It wasn’t. Fortunately for Earle and Bauld Insurance, neither was it a genuine phishing attempt either – just a PSI test.
Having failed the test, Earle had to take a cyber security course and pass a knowledge test to continue to work in his company’s system.
“It’s great that they’re testing me, as an owner, too,” Earle said.
“Anyone who works in our system needs to be cyber aware.”
Bauld Insurance started to work with PSI 12 years ago when the brokerage needed to update its servers to cloud-based alternatives.
“Back then, we were more worried about our building potentially burning down and destroying our files and data,” Earle said.
Now, the partnership has evolved to address new concerns that pose challenges to Bauld’s operations, like cyber-attacks, the frequency of which jumped 50% in 2021 and another 38% in 2022.
Drawing on PSI’s expertise also gives Earle greater insight on what software or services are safe to implement within the brokerage.
“If I’m interested in new operational technologies, they can usually tell me how secure they are since I don’t have the time or expertise to look further into these things,” he said.
The partnership also helps Bauld Insurance stay on top of the threat landscape, with very little effort, because PSI does the heavy lifting.
“Threats are always evolving and you can’t become complacent,” counselled Falvo. “It’s our job to stay ahead of the curve so that the brokers we work with don’t have to be cyber experts.
“We do that for them so that they can focus on what matters most, their customer.”
Intact Insurance is Canada's largest home, auto and business insurance company, the choice of more than four million consumers. Its coast-to-coast presence and its strong relationship with insurance brokers mean the company can provide the outstanding service, comfort and continuity customers deserve. Intact Insurance is a member company of Intact Financial Corporation (TSX: IFC), the largest provider of property and casualty insurance in Canada and a leading provider of specialty insurance in North America.
