Cyber risk is currently top of mind for insurers and is often highlighted as a prime emerging risk for the sector. 

Willis Re's 2020 cyber risk outlook survey highlighted this level of concern with 86% of insurance professionals expecting the frequency of cyber attacks to increase as a result of Covid-19.

Amid this backdrop, InsuranceERM's judging panel felt the joint offering of Israeli-headquartered cyber risk modelling firm Kovrr, and US cybersecurity ratings company BitSight, provides an end-to-end solution. For this reason, BitSight and Kovrr win cyber solution of the year.

The duo's platform measures a company's security performance and identifies third-party service providers and commonly used technologies and products. It therefore provides a bottom-up evidence-based financial measurement of a company's exposure to cyber risk and the potential accumulated portfolio's loss.

The platform also allows risk professionals to underwrite companies of any size, industry and location, as well as manage aggregated risk by allowing insurers to "drill down" to company specific exposures.

"We're committed to bringing a holistic solution and I think others (competitors) have parts of it, but are not fully end to end," according to Samit Shah, BitSight's head of insurance solutions.

Kovrr CEO Yakir Golan stresses the mindset of a fully end-to-end offering is vital in order to "fully streamline and operationalise cyber risk management".

Golan adds Kovrr brings a proprietary impact-based modelling framework to complement BitSight's offerings and says the end result allows complete visibility to clients.

"There is some concern clients don't understand the data or the modelling techniques used to produce the output," says Golan.

"We're committed to being transparent with the client so they have confidence in the data going in so they understand the output coming out."