Cowbell Cyber and Trend Micro are working together to increase MSP access to cyber insurance.
Trend Micro's MSP partners and customers now can use an all-digital application process to access Cowbell Cyber's Prime 100 cyber insurance policies, the companies said. In addition, Trend Micro has enhanced Cowbell's ability to provide closed-loop risk management for cyber insurance policyholders.
Furthermore, Trend Micro and Cowbell are providing their mutual customers with real-time insights into risk exposures, the companies noted. Cowbell also is working with Trend Micro to build deep technology integrations, which may result in future insurance premium credits for Trend Micro customers.
Cyber Insurance for MSPs: A Simplified Path Forward?
The partnership is quite timely, considering the growing challenges MSPs face in and around the cyber insurance market. Indeed, MSPs increasingly need to complete in-depth questionnaires about their risk management controls, security stacks, and associated best practices. Even if MSPs successfully navigate the questionnaires, service providers typically face rising cyber insurance rates amid continued cyberattacks against the MSP ecosystem.
While we don't know if the Cowbell Cyber-Trend Micro relationship will simplify the cyber insurance process for MSPs, the relationship at least provides a natural pathway for Trend Micro partners to potentially move forward on the insurance journey.
The Trend Micro partnership comes after Cowbell in January 2022 teamed up with cyber insurance solutions provider iBynd. Cowbell is using iBynd's technology to help MSSPs rate, quote and bind its insurance offerings digitally to customers in real time, the company said.
Cowbell previously unveiled its Connect MSSP partner program in June 2021. MSSPs can join Connect to access the same risk intelligence as cyber insurance underwriters and use this intelligence to find ways to help their customers minimize risk.
Cowbell lets MSPs and MSSPs use artificial intelligence to analyze their customers' security posture, the company indicated. From here, MSPs and MSSPs can provide Cowbell cyber insurance plans tailored to their customers.
Meanwhile, Cowbell leverages a continuous underwriting platform that compresses the cyber insurance process for MSPs and MSSPs from submission to issue to less than 5 minutes, the company stated. It also provides ongoing observability capabilities that MSPs and MSSPs can use to track their customers' coverages and update them as needed.
