Cowbell is proud to have a workforce that is over 40% female, compared to 24% of women in the cybersecurity industry. We appreciate every woman who decides to work at Cowbell and contribute with their expertise and talent in their respective fields.
Since the wrap of Season 6 of The Cowbell Factors podcast fell into March, Women’s History Month, we invited intelligent and inspiring women to our podcast every week of the month. Here is what we learned:
Tia Hopkins, Chief Cyber Resilience Officer, eSentire
Key takeaways from Tia’s episode include:
- Managed detection and response (MDR) is the core of what eSentire offers, but the company also works with customers to leverage their data and make key decisions based on their specific environment to improve cyber resilience. The company helps businesses, especially small and medium-sized, “do a lot with a little.”
- What is the distinction between cybersecurity and cyber resilience? An organization that focuses on being “cyber secure” looks at existing gaps and works to mitigate those risks. Cybersecurity focuses on what is known and what you can identify to reduce cyber risk, while cyber resilience means that you prepare for anything, including unknown risks to ensure business continuity.
- Cowbell Rx, a marketplace of cybersecurity partners, brings vetted solutions with preferred pricing to the risk resources already made available to policyholders. Cowbell Rx is a key component of Cowbell’s closed-loop risk management approach. The goal is to help policyholders continuously improve their risk profile. Together with our partners, such as eSentire, Cowbell is bringing streamlined access to top cybersecurity solutions to keep our policyholders secure.
Alexis Vaughn, AVP of Agency Marketing, Cowbell
Key takeaways from Alexis’s episode include:
- After conducting a survey of our brokers and agents, we discovered that more education was needed at every level on cyber insurance in order to more effectively sell the product.
- Cowbell Academy is the first e-learning center dedicated to cyber insurance by a standalone cyber insurance provider. Cowbell Academy also offers continuing education, a service that is totally complimentary to all appointed agents.
- Cowbell policies are more than just the policy. Other value-adds include access to our dedicated risk engineering team, Cowbell Rx marketplace, and now, Cowbell Academy.
- In the near future, Cowbell Academy will become available to policyholders in addition to agents and brokers.
Monica Minkel, VP, Executive Risk Enterprise Leader, PC, Holmes Murphy
Key takeaways from Monica’s episode include:
- The cyber insurance market has changed a lot over the last decade or two. Coverages have expanded to include ransomware, social engineering, and more. The application questions being asked of potential policyholders are more specific and allow for a more complete understanding of the risk profile of the business. This, and other data collected, help better inform underwriting decisions. Cowbell uses inside-out and outside-in data in underwriting decisions as part of its continuous underwriting.
- The abundance of data contributes to proactive risk reduction, or what Cowbell likes to call, closed-loop risk management: Assess, Insure, Respond, Recover.
- Over the course of Monica’s 20+ year career in this industry, she has observed the lines at the women’s restrooms go from nonexistent to being quite long. This is a clear sign of the increasing diversity present in both the cybersecurity and insurance industries.
- Cowbell has a network of 21,000 appointed brokers around the U.S. If you need one, feel free to visit our Find A Broker page.
For more, be sure to listen to Tia’s, Alexis’s, and Monica’s full podcast episodes. Visit the Cowbell Factors Podcast library to listen to last season’s episodes and subscribe to stay up to date on upcoming ones. It is available on most podcast platforms (iHeartRadio, Spotify, Google podcast, Apple podcast, Anchor, and Radio Public). If you enjoyed this episode, consider rating it with 5 stars on Spotify and Apple!
