5 Strategies for Helping Clients Understand Their Cyber Exposure

• By: Olivia Overman
• October 12, 2026

No person or business is exempt from cyber threats. Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting individuals who remain vulnerable to identity theft, phishing attacks and data breaches as well as organizations across every industry.

“Cyberattacks don’t just happen to large companies,” says Mike Maletsky, vice president, practice leader for technology and cyber, Hiscox. “Many small and midsized organizations face the same threats as larger enterprises but often have less insurance protection, fewer dedicated security resources and less formal risk management.”

“Agents play a critical role in helping clients understand that cyber risk is not limited to large companies or technology businesses,” says Betty Shepherd, divisional president, cyber risk, Great American Insurance Group. “Every organization that uses email, stores data, relies on vendors, processes payments or depends on computer systems has cyber exposure.” 

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which gives agents a timely opportunity to help clients strengthen cyber hygiene, educate employees about emerging threats and review their cyber insurance coverage. Here are five tips agents can use to help clients understand their risks and navigate the changing cyber landscape:

1) Start the conversation early. “A good agent playbook right now is to focus less on ‘selling a policy’ and more on helping clients understand exposure, improve controls and avoid coverage surprises,” says Michael Phillips, global head of cyber portfolio underwriting at Coalition.

When discussing cyber threats, agents can add greater value by educating clients about emerging risks, identifying potential vulnerabilities and offering risk mitigation and management strategies.

Additionally, “cyber renewals should not be handled at the last minute,” Shepherd says. “Early engagement gives clients time to address control gaps before underwriting begins.”

2) Make cyber risk easy to understand. “Clients respond better when agents explain cyber risk in simple business terms, rather than technical jargon,” Phillips says. “Agents should lead with clarity over jargon and position themselves as invested in the client’s cybersecurity rather than just premiums.” 

Additionally, “spend time understanding how the policy responds to evolving exposures such as artificial intelligence (AI), third-party vendor outages and systemic cyber events,” Maletsky says. “Policy language is evolving quickly, and coverage can vary significantly between carriers.”

In an evolving market, “pay closer attention to policy wording and common gaps,” Phillips says. “Agents should walk clients through what is and is not covered, and where cyber and other business insurance coverages may overlap.”

By ensuring clients understand the risks they face and the coverage they require for those exposures, agents can help them make more informed decisions, strengthen their overall risk management strategies and avoid costly gaps in protection.

“Education is critical in the mitigation of cyber risk, particularly in such a rapidly evolving landscape,” Maletsky says. “Basic but effective controls such as multifactor authentication, tested backups, endpoint detection and response, and documented incident response planning can make a real difference and impact insurance terms.”

3) Partner with established cyber carriers. “Agents should view their roles as trusted advisors that partner with carriers that possess deep expertise and a variety of solutions to assist them when navigating the ever-changing and complex cyber insurance market,” says Anthony Dolce, head of professional liability, cyber and tech errors & omissions at The Hartford. “Given the real-time nature of cyber risk, businesses should seek carriers that combine underwriting expertise with continuous visibility into emerging threats and critical vulnerabilities.”

This is particularly important as “many clients underestimate the financial impact of business interruption, ransomware recovery, privacy notification, regulatory defense, reputational harm and vendor-related outages,” Shepherd says.

4) Use real-world examples. By focusing conversations on the types of incidents businesses are most likely to experience, agents can help clients better understand their real-world exposure and the practical steps needed to reduce risk.

“Lead with the threats that are actually driving losses,” Phillips says. “Agents should be talking proactively about business email compromise and funds transfer fraud, not just ransomware—because human-layer attacks are increasingly central to the risk landscape.”

5) Prepare a strong underwriting submission. “The best submissions tell a clear risk story,” Shepherd says. “They explain what the client does, what data they hold, what systems are critical, what controls are in place and how those controls are tested.”

Olivia Overman is IA content editor.