If you've renewed cyber insurance recently, you've probably noticed the questionnaire got longer. And weirder. There are questions about privileged account reviews, EDR coverage percentages, patch cadences with SLA specifics, and "please attach evidence" prompts that would have been optional two years ago.
That's not paranoia. It's evidence-based underwriting. Insurers got their fingers burnt on ransomware claims from businesses that had said "yes" on the questionnaire and turned out to mean "sort of." So now they want proof, not attestation.
What insurers are asking for, in plain English
- MFA coverage — not "yes we have it," but "on which accounts, enforced how, what happens with shared inboxes and service accounts."
- Endpoint protection details — brand, coverage percentage, whether it's EDR (with response) or just AV.
- Patch cadence — how quickly are critical patches applied, and can you evidence it?
- Backup posture — how often, immutable or not, tested when.
- Incident response — do you have a plan, when was it last exercised.
- Privileged access controls — how many admins, MFA on those accounts, review cadence.
- Email security — filtering, impersonation protection, DMARC.
- User awareness training — cadence, evidence of participation.
The trap most SMBs fall into
Saying "yes" to a question you can't evidence. If a claim gets denied because your questionnaire answers didn't match reality, that's the worst possible time to find out.
What we do about it
- We map every question to your environment and produce evidence.
- We tell you which "yes" answers you shouldn't tick and how quickly we can close the gap so you can.
- We keep an evidence pack updated year-round, not scrambled together the week before renewal.
- We speak fluent broker. Where an insurer's language is ambiguous, we clarify with them so your answers are unambiguous.
The businesses that treat renewal as a project instead of a fire drill are the ones that get better premiums and shorter questionnaires the following year.
Send us your renewal questionnaire. We'll show you which answers we can back with evidence today, and which need a small project.
Send us your questionnaire