For years, carriers have encouraged you to have cybersecurity.
Starting this May, that is changing. What has been guidance is becoming a condition. And once carriers move that line, it does not move back.
The shift happening this month has been building for several years.
The insurance industry moved their entire operation online.
Client records, applications, health information, and financial data all flow through digital systems all day, every day.
That concentration of sensitive data in connected environments created an opportunity that cybercriminals recognized long before the industry did.
Attacks on small agencies grew every year.
The methods became more sophisticated.
Phishing campaigns became personalized.
Credential theft became automated.
Business email compromise became the most common and most costly attack category in the industry.
Carriers studied what actually happened inside the agencies that got hit. They saw the same gaps appear again and again: unprotected email, missing authentication layers, no documented security program, and no plan for when something goes wrong.
May is when that observation becomes a requirement.
Email security is at the top of that list:
The expectation around compliant email communication is moving from recommended to REQUIRED.
Some compliance changes come and go. This one will not.
Carrier requirements are tied to the threat landscape, and the threat landscape has one consistent direction.
Being ready for May does not mean rebuilding your agency’s technology from scratch.
It means knowing exactly what you have in place right now.
If your current setup has not been reviewed in months, this is the perfect time to do it for free here.