Your insurance broker probably sent you one of those questionnaires sometime in the last year. You know the one—pages of questions about your cybersecurity setup that made you realize you weren’t entirely sure how to answer half of them.
Welcome to the new normal. Insurance carriers have basically stopped writing cyber policies the way they used to, and Atlanta businesses are scrambling to figure out what that means for their actual security infrastructure. Not because they suddenly care more about security, necessarily, but because their insurance renewal depends on it.
When Insurance Companies Started Paying Attention
Something shifted around 2021 and 2022. Ransomware claims got so bad that insurance carriers watched their entire profit margins evaporate. They paid out hundreds of millions in claims, and suddenly underwriters who used to rubber-stamp cyber policies started asking questions that most IT managers couldn’t answer.
The questionnaires got longer. The requirements got stricter. And companies that had been renewing their policies without much thought for years started getting declined or quoted premiums that were triple what they paid the year before.
Here in Atlanta, we saw it hit manufacturing and distribution companies first, then professional services firms, then basically everyone else. The carriers didn’t care about your industry anymore—they cared about whether you could prove you had specific security controls in place.
The Requirements That Are Changing Everything
If you haven’t looked at a cyber insurance application lately, you might be surprised at what’s now considered baseline. These aren’t nice-to-haves anymore. They’re the minimum requirements to even get quoted:
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Required on all remote access points
- Required for email and cloud applications
- Required for privileged accounts and administrative access
- No exceptions, no grandfather clauses
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
- Traditional antivirus doesn’t cut it anymore
- Carriers want proof of active monitoring and threat response
- Coverage needs to extend to all devices, including mobile
Regular Backups with Offline Storage
- Daily backups aren’t enough—they want to know about your recovery testing
- At least one copy needs to be truly offline or immutable
- Documentation of your backup retention and recovery procedures
Email Security Beyond Basic Filtering
- Advanced threat protection for phishing and business email compromise
- DMARC, SPF, and DKIM authentication protocols
- User security awareness training with testing
Privileged Access Management
- Documented processes for who has admin rights
- Regular access reviews and deprovisioning procedures
- Separation of duties for critical systems
Look familiar? If you’re thinking “we’re not doing half of this,” you’re not alone. Most Atlanta companies aren’t. That’s becoming a real problem when renewal time comes around.
Why This Is Actually Harder Than It Sounds
The tricky part isn’t understanding what the insurance carriers want. The requirements are pretty clear once you read through them. The hard part is that most companies built their security infrastructure backwards.
They added tools as problems came up. Someone clicked a phishing link, so they bought better email filtering. They had a laptop stolen, so they implemented encryption. They needed remote access during COVID, so they set up a VPN. Each decision made sense at the time, but nobody was thinking about how it all fit together.
Now you’ve got this patchwork of solutions that kind of work but don’t really integrate, and you’re trying to document it all for an insurance application. Half the time, nobody’s entirely sure what’s protecting what anymore.
That’s where a lot of Atlanta businesses are finding they need to bring in cybersecurity services Atlanta providers who can actually audit what they have, identify the gaps, and build something that makes sense as a coherent system. Not because they want to, but because the insurance requirement forced them to finally address it.
The Premiums That Made CFOs Start Caring
Here’s what really got everyone’s attention: the money. Companies that couldn’t meet the new requirements started seeing their premiums double or triple. Some couldn’t get coverage at all and had to go to specialty markets with deductibles so high they basically provided no real protection.
One Atlanta professional services firm told me their renewal quote came back at $47,000, up from $12,000 the previous year. Their coverage limits were lower, their deductible was higher, and they had a list of security controls they needed to implement within 90 days or the policy would be voided.
That conversation got the CFO’s attention real quick. Suddenly there was budget for security improvements that had been “under consideration” for two years.
The math started making sense too. Spending $30,000 to upgrade their security stack and qualify for better insurance rates meant their premium dropped to $18,000. They essentially got better security for less money than they would’ve paid in increased premiums alone.
What Happens If You Don’t Meet Requirements
Some companies are gambling that they can fudge the questionnaire a bit. Maybe stretch the truth about their MFA implementation or oversell their backup procedures. That’s a risky play, and here’s why:
When you file a claim, the carrier investigates. If they find out you didn’t actually have the controls in place that you said you did, they can deny the claim entirely. You’ve been paying premiums for coverage that was void from the start.
We’ve seen this happen. An Atlanta company got hit with ransomware, filed a claim for $200,000, and the carrier denied it because their MFA implementation didn’t match what they’d represented on their application. They technically had MFA turned on, but it wasn’t enforced for everyone and had exceptions they’d never disclosed.
The company ended up paying the ransom out of pocket and still had to defend themselves in a legal dispute with the carrier over the denied claim. It became way more expensive than just implementing proper security from the beginning.
The Unexpected Benefit Nobody Talks About
Here’s something interesting, though. Companies that went through this process—that got forced by insurance requirements to really overhaul their security—most of them will tell you it was actually worth it beyond just the insurance piece.
Better security infrastructure means fewer disruptions. It means less time dealing with malware incidents and compromised accounts. It means employees can work remotely without constant VPN issues. It means clients stop asking uncomfortable questions about your security posture.
Several Atlanta businesses I’ve worked with on cybersecurity services Atlanta implementations told me the same thing: they started this because insurance made them, but they kept investing in it because it actually improved their operations.
Where To Start If You’re Not Ready
If your renewal is coming up and you’re not confident you can check all these boxes honestly, start now. Don’t wait until 60 days before renewal when your broker sends the application.
Get an actual security assessment from someone who knows what insurance carriers are looking for. Figure out where your gaps are and what it’ll take to close them. Some fixes are quick—implementing MFA properly might take a few weeks. Others take longer, like deploying EDR across your entire device fleet.
Budget for it appropriately. This isn’t optional anymore. The insurance market has fundamentally changed, and Atlanta companies that haven’t adapted yet are either paying huge premiums or taking enormous uninsured risks.
Your competitors have already figured this out. The question is whether you’ll get there before your next renewal, or after a very uncomfortable conversation with your broker about why your premium just tripled.