Harnessing the Power of Data Protection: Empowering Insurance Sector Through Ironclad Security Measures

#datasecurity #dataprivacy #cybersec #technology #india #insuretech #insurance

Data Breach report-

According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, the most common outsider attacks on companies in the insurance and financial industries are phishing, credential theft, and ransomware attacks. Employees often make errors, such as misdelivering valuable data. There are also malicious insiders who may conduct insurance fraud, aiming to benefit financially from defrauding their employer.

For financial services, privacy and data security are not just a key competitive advantage but a prerequisite for existing in the business.

Hence, abiding by international, regional, and industry-specific regulatory compliances for personal and financial data is an absolute must—either as data controllers or data processors.

Regulatory and Compliance perspective –

To prevent this Various regulatory and compliance requirement need adequate data security controls to be implemented for protection of sensitive data. Few regulatory and compliance requirement in Indian citizen's context is as follows:

?-?IRDAI (Maintenance of Insurance Records) Regulations, 2015, Regulation 3(3)(b), 3(9) says, Insurers are required to ensure that: (i) the system in which the policy and claim records are maintained has adequate security features; and (ii) the records pertaining to policies issued and claims made in India (including the records held in electronic form) are held in data center's located and maintained in India.

- DPDPA Act 2023, Breach in observing the obligation of Data Fiduciary to take reasonable security safeguards to prevent personal data breach under sub-section (5) of section 8. Penalty May extend to two hundred and fifty crore rupees.

Global Regulations –

?? Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act:

HIPAA ensures the privacy of health insurance information and mandates guidelines for sharing medical information with claims handlers and healthcare providers. Regarding billing and payment statements, HIPAA mandates that insurance must take adequate measures to protect the confidentiality of patients' sensitive data. This includes ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to protected health information, implementing strong data encryption and authentication protocols, and maintaining stringent audit trails to track information access.

?? Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act:

GLBA requires financial institutions to protect customer information, such as credit card details and account balances, while empowering customers with certain rights over their data.

?? Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard:

PCI DSS is a set of standards that safeguard credit card data by implementing network security protocols, limiting access to sensitive information and conducting regular security checks.

Data security for BFSI/Insurance sector is going to be of key focus which will require focus on below -

a.?Data privacy – especially with the data privacy bill that has been tabled in a country and Insurance Sector handling majority of the user related data it requires enhance user data management solutions. What are the ways to be resilience with the solutions? In case of any breach what is the SOP (needs automated compliance check solutions) that they have to follow so that they are secured and are compliant to the data regulation laws and liable for legalities/actions. Deploy regulatory compliance management software, and conduct regular compliance audits.

b.?Data security on hybrid infrastructure, cloud containers and Cloud Services

c.?Strong consolidated & innovative SOC solutions which can look at the broader correlation & analytics of application/infrastructure/security monitoring along with addressing the incidents with an automated resolution. So essentially what you need is a level 1-1.5 AI enabled automated resolution enabled tools. Advance?incident response (IR) services?within a consolidated solutions of SOC

d.?Need of DataSecOps which is an advancement to DevSecOps, comprising of threat protection that is primarily around CASB, data protection,? Securing data on data stores and objects, cloud workload protection platforms, application database protections and cloud cyber security posture managements more from a data security perspective. Now the tools sets needs to be embedded from a data security perspective into the DevOps pipeline and more from the operations/break-fix point of view because we are living in the cloud. The objective of DataSecOps should be to provide continuous data discovery, security, data engineering collaboration, risk prioritization and simple and quick data access, clear data access policies, common access layers across different types of data sets, instant on boarding and offloading of data sets and building automation and integrations for data OPS channel

e.?Implementation of robust data classification and management systems. Knowing what data you have, and its sensitivity level, helps in applying appropriate security measures.

f.??Data Backup Solution & strategy to minimize the impact of Ransomware attacks

g.?Adoption of unified data security management platforms that provide visibility across all IT environments, ensuring consistent security policies.

h.?Use of advanced threat intelligence platforms with focus on endpoint security solutions, and automated penetration testing. Need for extended detection and response (XDR)

i.??Third-Party Vendor Risks:

????ii. Conduct third-party security assessments, establish clear security requirements in contracts, and automated monitoring of vendor data access.

????iii. Data Fragmentation: Centralize data storage when possible and implement data governance frameworks.

????iv.?Encryption Challenges: Use of centralized key management solutions and regularly update encryption algorithms to current standards. Roadmap for hardware based Key Management Solution/Quantum Key Management Solutions

????v. Address supply chain vulnerabilities as considering global political disturbance where threats often arise from third-party exposures.

In order to overcome the above-mentioned data security focus area, our persistent Data Security practice provides comprehensive solution to meet & comply with Insurance regulations.

How Persistent can help bolster data security posturing

Security can burden businesses by usurping resources and bandwidth, diluting focus from innovation and core business activities. It is also a specialized field that requires out-of-the-box thinking and hard-to-find niche skills to strategize and plan security frameworks that keep ahead of the bad actors.

Persistent, with its three-decade-long engineering legacy, can help enterprises be prepared to ward off a security threat. Our data security veterans have created a data security framework embedded with accelerators and industry-aligned tools to ensure 360-degree data protection.

Our framework comprises:

·???????? Security Assessments: In-depth evaluation of existing data security infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities and develop a roadmap for improvement.

·???????? Policy and Procedure Development: Creating robust data security policies, procedures, and best practices aligned with industry standards and regulatory requirements.

·???????? Incident Response and Remediation: Developing incident response plans and providing swift and practical assistance for minimal disruption and optimal recovery.

·???????? Tool Recommendation: Identifying & understanding customer’s technical requirements and evaluate & assess the best fit tool to propose.

·???????? Technology Implementation: Recommending and implementing advanced data security technologies, including database firewalls, encryption tools, DLP and more.

Step into my personal bubble of ideas and perspectives. Disclaimer: these views are mine alone and don't reflect my organization's stance.