3 min read
The rapid advancements in technology have opened the floodgates to data privacy threats. Therefore, data protection has become one of the most crucial and challenging tasks for all organizations, especially for companies engaged in financial and health services. According to Statista, the healthcare and medical industries are the top two industries that have suffered the maximum data breaches in the last decade.
Since insurance companies engage in both financial and healthcare services, they are next in the chain to be prone to severe data breaches. It is crucial for insurance companies to master data protection because they have to collect and store personal details of individuals including health data which is categorized as sensitive information across many jurisdictions.
Many insurtech businesses have emerged in the last few years that provide safe digital solutions to insurance companies for tackling the different parts of the insurance value chain. Due to the vast options available in the industry, it gets difficult for insurance companies to decide on the most suitable B2B insurtech option based on their data protection needs.
Each organization has a different set of IT requirements for data protection, although the bar is really high, especially for large organizations. Therefore, insurance companies must conduct an internal data privacy audit to understand their requirements and choose the safe insurtech solution accordingly. However, there are a few essential features that all organizations must-have for maximum data protection. Here are the three key features that insurance companies must consider while dealing with any safe insurtech software.
Insurance companies have to transfer large volumes of data every day. Personal information of individuals goes through several checkpoints. Since this is a complex and delicate process, there are many employees involved that can access data at these multiple checkpoints. Also, as insurance companies manage their operations through SaaS storage platforms, they have to protect their data from being visible to other functional users on the platform like employees, contractors, or consultants who do not necessarily need to see such information. Conversational process automation (CPA) activities that use insurance chatbots can make the personal information of individuals accessible to employees of insurance companies. If the consumption of such data is not controlled, it can give rise to potential data breach threats.
Therefore, it is essential to streamline the process of data transfer and to give limited access to employees and other stakeholders. Insurance companies can tackle this issue through role-based access control (RBAC) features in safe insurtech. RBAC is a technique that provides restricted access to information to all individuals within a network according to their roles. Since employees perform different duties, they can access the necessary information and protect the rest of the data.
Role-based access control strategy facilitates secured transfer, management, and storage of information on a network. Insurance companies can provide limited data access to employees based on their duties and functions with RBAC by restricting permissions to access data. In simple terms, insurance companies can control what data their employees can access.
The role-based access control strategy is also beneficial while engaging with third parties. Insurance companies can transfer limited data to other parties, thereby reducing the chances of data breaches. For instance, the CPA platform of Spixii is based on a fine-grained access control (FGAC) framework that controls data and customizes access at the initial level, thus ensuring maximum data protection.
Changes are not only inevitable in any organization but healthy for its survival. Insurance companies often test their new products or make changes to their existing software to enhance their services. Before companies launch their new products, they run a test to ensure their smooth functioning because there is always a scope for internal or external error. This is how companies effectively manage their risks and reduce the risk of losses. It is an essential part of change management. For the testing part, organizations use version control or revision control tools. It allows organizations to test their products by creating a draft or beta model. The version control feature tracks the modifications and allows revisions if required.
Therefore, insurance companies must look for change management and version control features that allow a smooth transition and have secured testing environments.
One of the best strategies to master data protection is to conduct frequent audits. Despite taking higher degrees of precaution, there is always a slight risk of a data breach. To reduce this risk further, safe insurtech solutions provide the audit log feature which constantly tracks the activities on a network.
As insurance companies manage their operations through SaaS platforms which are accessed by many users, it gets challenging for companies to ensure the smooth functioning of all processes, especially when users make continuous changes. Therefore, it is vital to track all activities on a network to prevent harmful activities. The audit logs tool makes this process easier. It automatically tracks all user activities, and monitors and prevents suspicious activity by the users. It helps centralize information and if any data privacy breach activity takes place, companies can check the audit log to find out the loophole and review the incident.
It is recommended for insurance companies to avail themselves of safe insurtech services whose audit log feature allows real-time export of audit activity in .xls or PDF format.
To master data protection and mitigate the risk of huge financial losses, insurance companies must engage with B2B insurtech companies that offer the above three features in their data protection SaaS software. However, these three features alone will not suffice for data protection. Insurance companies must also adopt other vital management strategies for data protection like data inventory, data minimization, data anonymization, data portability, and adhering to standard and regulatory data protection compliances.
Data inventory or data mapping is the process of creating a comprehensive repository of an organization's data assets. The inventory contains all data in a classified manner along with its source. It helps organizations know their exposure in case of a data breach. Data minimization is the process of collecting minimum data from individuals, only the bare minimum or essential information is to be collected. Data anonymization, as the name suggests, is a technique that does not reveal the identity of the data subject and the information is unidentifiable.