Cyber insurance applications have turned into security audits. Underwriters now ask detailed questions about multi-factor authentication, endpoint detection and response, backups, privileged access, patching and incident response plans, and they expect the answers to be accurate. A wrong answer on an underwriting questionnaire can lead to a declined application, a higher premium, a ransomware sublimit or, worst of all, a dispute over coverage after a claim.
AI-assisted ransomware and business email compromise have pushed loss costs up, and insurers have responded by tightening cyber insurance requirements and rewarding organizations that can prove their controls. A cyber insurance readiness assessment checks your environment against what carriers actually ask, gives you evidence for the application and produces a prioritized list of fixes before the renewal date.
The ten firms below take different routes to the same goal. Some are insurers that build security services into the policy, some are brokers with assessment platforms, and some are security providers that run a readiness or insurability assessment for you. We describe what each one actually offers so you can pick the model that fits. If a gap turns out to be 24/7 monitoring, our list of managed detection and response providers is a good next step.
| Company | Headquarters | Best For | Core Services |
| Arctic Wolf | Eden Prairie, USA | Organizations that want to qualify for, keep and improve coverage through a security operations partner | Cyber JumpStart portal, Cyber Resilience Assessment, insurability rating, MDR, incident response |
| Aon | Dublin, Ireland | Mid-size and large organizations placing coverage through a broker | CyQu Cyber Quotient Evaluation, cyber risk consulting, insurance placement |
| Coalition | San Francisco, USA | Small and mid-size businesses that want an insurer that scans and monitors for them | Free security assessment, Coalition Control, AI SOC, incident response, cyber insurance |
| At-Bay | San Francisco, USA | Small and mid-size policyholders that want security tools embedded in their coverage | Stance security platform, attack surface monitoring, vCISO advisory, MDR, response and recovery |
| Cowbell | Pleasanton, USA | Small and mid-size businesses that want free risk assessments with their policy | Risk assessment, Cowbell Insights, micro-penetration testing, vendor risk assessment, MDR, COMPaaS |
| Resilience | San Francisco, USA | Mid-market and large companies that want cyber risk quantified in dollars | Cyber and tech E&O insurance, Resilience Edge, risk quantification, Risk Operations Center |
| Check Point | Redwood City, USA | Organizations and brokers that want a vendor-agnostic insurability assessment | Insurability Assessment Program with Cysurance, Infinity Global Services, security consulting |
| Datapath | Modesto, USA | Regulated organizations in California and Ohio preparing evidence for renewal | Cyber insurance audit preparation, managed cybersecurity, compliance, backup, vCISO |
| Managed Technology | Smithtown, USA | Small and mid-size businesses in the New York metro area | Cyber insurance readiness, risk assessments, compliance readiness, backup, training, IR planning |
| TeckPath | Calgary, Canada | Canadian SMBs that need technical validation for an insurance application | Readiness assessments, questionnaire and evidence support, ongoing control management, managed IT and security |
Arctic Wolf, headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is a security operations company best known for managed detection and response, and it states plainly that it helps customers qualify for, maintain and optimize cyber insurance by working with them to implement the controls insurers look for. Its pitch is that better visibility into security posture removes a common barrier to buying risk transfer at all.
The practical starting point is the Cyber JumpStart portal, which Arctic Wolf has opened free to individual organizations. It includes a Cyber Resilience Assessment Lite that maps security posture against NIST CSF and CIS Critical Security Controls v8, an integrated Arctic Wolf insurability rating that can support applications, renewals and self-attestations with brokers, an incident response planner stored off-network and guides on the controls most often required to get and keep coverage. Organizations that find gaps can then add Arctic Wolf’s managed services. It suits mid-size companies that want an insurability assessment and a path to fixing what it finds with one provider.
Aon is a global insurance broker and risk advisor whose principal executive office is in Dublin, Ireland. Its Cyber Quotient Evaluation, or CyQu, is an online platform that assesses an organization’s cyber maturity across control areas such as endpoint and systems security, data protection and business resilience. It highlights control gaps, helps set spending priorities, tracks maturity year over year and lets clients compare results with industry peers.
What makes CyQu different is that the assessment and the insurance application are the same exercise. CyQu includes application question sets for cyber, errors and omissions and miscellaneous professional liability, replacing paper forms with one online interface where several stakeholders can collaborate, and accurate prior answers carry over to the next cyber insurance renewal. Aon specialists review the findings to flag likely underwriting concerns and suggest mitigations, and clients can document improvements and add commentary for underwriters before the broker exports the submission. It suits organizations already working with a broker that want readiness and placement tied together.
Coalition is a cyber insurance provider headquartered in San Francisco that builds security tooling into its insurance model. It offers a free security assessment and Coalition Control, a risk management platform that it provides free to help businesses see and act on their risks. It also offers an AI-driven SOC service, security awareness training, login security for email compromise and an incident response affiliate that helps clients contain threats and recover systems.
For readiness, Coalition’s value is an outside-in view that matches how an insurer sees you. Its scanning looks at internet-facing systems, exposed services and leaked credentials, which are the same signals that drive many underwriting decisions. Some IT providers use Coalition’s platform to run readiness scans for their clients. Coalition notes that non-insurance products and services may require separate payment, so confirm what is included with a policy. It is a sensible starting point for small businesses that want a quick, free look at their external exposure before applying, and that would value an insurer that keeps monitoring after the policy is bound.
At-Bay is a cyber insurance company headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Mountain View, Chicago and Atlanta and an R&D team in Tel Aviv. Its Stance platform is included with policies through an embedded security fee and combines fraud defense for email-based financial fraud, attack surface monitoring across domains, devices, users and cloud apps, employee security training and on-demand security experts for risk prioritization, assessments and vCISO consulting.
At-Bay links security directly to coverage terms, which makes readiness concrete. Qualified policyholders that implement an approved MDR solution may be eligible for a premium credit, and its Core, Advanced and Complete packages tie security levels, such as endpoint MDR and email MDR, to enhancements like reduced ransomware retentions and waiting periods. Stance MDR is sold separately by At-Bay Security and is open to non-policyholders. Enhancements depend on the risk profile, so buyers should confirm specifics with their insurance representative. At-Bay suits businesses that want their insurer to tell them exactly which controls will improve their terms.
Cowbell is a cyber insurance provider whose press releases are datelined Pleasanton, California, with offices across the US and in London, Sydney, Toronto and Pune. It offers a set of complimentary risk and security services that includes a risk assessment, Cowbell Insights, an incident response plan template, cybersecurity awareness training, micro-penetration testing, vendor risk assessment and its OMNI Risk Advisor.
Cowbell’s model quantifies risk through what it calls Cowbell Factors and uses its connectors to pull security data from a business’s environment, which gives policyholders a concrete view of where they stand rather than a generic checklist. For organizations that need more, it sells subscription services including managed detection and response, penetration testing, IdentityAI, awareness training and compliance as a service. The complimentary micro-penetration testing is a useful extra for small businesses that have never been tested. Cowbell suits small and mid-size businesses that want an insurer to measure their risk, explain what is driving it and offer services to close the gaps.
Resilience is a cyber insurance and risk company headquartered in San Francisco. It provides cyber and technology errors and omissions coverage with 24/7 in-house claims and incident response, and it combines that with security tools: Security Investment Prioritization ranks controls by financial impact, a Risk Operations Center watches for vulnerabilities that could cause major losses, and its Threatonomics Risk Graph translates technical risk into financial terms.
Resilience approaches readiness from the board’s point of view. Rather than a yes-or-no checklist, it estimates how much each gap could cost and which fixes reduce expected loss the most, which helps a CFO decide where to spend before renewal. Its multi-entity and portfolio risk tooling automates dollar-based assessments for every subsidiary and business unit, useful for holding companies and private equity owners. Customer case studies describe Resilience Edge as a platform that turns security goals into a prioritized, quantified action plan. Resilience suits larger organizations that want readiness work expressed in financial terms.
Check Point is a security vendor with its US corporate headquarters in Redwood City, California, and international headquarters in Tel Aviv. Through its Infinity Global Services arm, it launched an Insurability Assessment Program with Cysurance, a risk mitigation company, to help businesses find and reduce weaknesses so they can meet underwriter requirements and qualify for coverage.
The program runs in four stages: engagement to set roles, evidence collection through interviews, documents and site visits, analysis, and reporting with a gap analysis. Check Point’s assessment team checks the organization against frameworks including NIST CSF and GDPR and produces a report on strengths, weaknesses and recommended improvements that goes to both the client and its broker. Cysurance describes the analysis as vendor-agnostic. For brokers, the program reduces the effort of deciding whether a client qualifies. It suits organizations that want a formal, evidence-based insurability assessment from a large security vendor, and brokers looking for a repeatable process for their clients.
Datapath is a managed IT and cybersecurity provider with its California headquarters in Modesto and an Ohio headquarters in Dublin, plus offices in Fresno and Irvine. It serves regulated organizations in healthcare, K-12 education, financial services and government, and it supports compliance frameworks such as GLBA, CMMC, PCI DSS, SOC 2 and CJIS.
Its cyber insurance work is practical and evidence-driven. Datapath organizes proof of MFA, endpoint protection, backups, privileged access, incident response, vendor risk and recovery before a renewal, then compares the answers on the cyber insurance questionnaire against the actual evidence, owners, exceptions and remediation status. The result is a renewal package that can be presented for underwriting review. That questionnaire-to-evidence check is exactly what protects an organization from attesting to controls it does not fully have. Datapath also supports proof that restored systems are clean after an incident, for counsel, insurers and the board. It suits regulated mid-size organizations in its regions that want readiness and the managed services to fix gaps.
Managed Technology is an IT support and cybersecurity provider based in Smithtown, New York, with offices in New York City, Stamford, Connecticut and East Rutherford, New Jersey. It serves small and mid-size businesses in architecture, construction, education, engineering, finance, healthcare, law, local government, manufacturing and non-profits.
Its cybersecurity insurance readiness service is built around the controls carriers commonly ask about: multi-factor authentication, endpoint detection, immutable backups and a documented incident response plan. The engagement starts with a risk assessment and report aligned to insurer requirements, then covers compliance readiness against frameworks such as HIPAA, CMMC and NIST CSF, ransomware and malware protection, backup and recovery, employee training and incident response planning and testing. Because Managed Technology can also implement the fixes, the readiness work leads directly into remediation. It suits small and mid-size firms in the New York metro area that want a local team to prepare them for underwriting and keep controls in place afterward.
TeckPath is a Canadian managed IT and managed security provider headquartered in Calgary, with phone lines in Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver. It serves growing Canadian businesses that cannot easily staff an in-house security team, with services including managed IT, cybersecurity, Microsoft 365, backup and disaster recovery, penetration testing, 24/7 monitoring and compliance support.
Its cyber insurance readiness service is clearly scoped: TeckPath describes it as technical validation for your cyber insurance application, not insurance. It has three parts: readiness assessments that measure your current posture against insurer expectations, questionnaire and evidence support to help complete applications and gather documentation, and ongoing control management so those controls stay in place after the policy is bound. That last piece matters, because a control that lapses mid-term can complicate a claim. TeckPath suits Canadian small and mid-size businesses that want a provider to verify their answers before they sign an application, then keep the environment in that state.
The firms above fall into three models: insurers with built-in security tools, brokers with assessment platforms and security providers that assess and remediate. These questions help you decide which model fits.
An external scan shows what an insurer can see from the internet, such as exposed remote access and leaked credentials. A full review checks internal controls like MFA coverage, EDR, backups and privileged access. Most organizations need both before a major renewal.
Ask for a sample deliverable. The best ones map each control to the questions carriers ask and include dated evidence, so you can answer the underwriting questionnaire truthfully and defend the answers if a claim is reviewed later.
Insurer and broker tools identify problems, while security providers can also implement fixes. If you lack internal staff, choose a firm that can remediate or partner with one. Our small business cybersecurity checklist covers the basic controls most carriers expect.
A provider that assesses you and sells you the fix has an incentive to find gaps. That is not always a problem, but ask how it prioritizes findings and whether it will tell you when an existing tool is good enough.
Carriers increasingly ask whether you have a written, tested incident response plan. Use the readiness assessment to confirm yours is current, and review our guide on how to handle a ransomware attack to pressure test it.
A cyber insurance readiness assessment is cheap compared with a denied claim or a premium that doubles at renewal. Arctic Wolf, Check Point, Datapath, Managed Technology and TeckPath assess your environment and can help close gaps. Aon ties readiness directly to the broker submission through CyQu. Coalition, At-Bay, Cowbell and Resilience build assessments and security services into the insurance relationship itself.
Start three to four months before your renewal, gather evidence for each control the carrier asks about, fix the gaps that carry the most weight and make sure every answer on the application is one you can prove.