Cybercriminals view the insurance industry as one of their most attractive targets. Regulated personal data, a distributed workforce, and cloud-based networks make this sector particularly lucrative for attacks. The insurance industry has claims adjusters in the field, third-party insurance brokers, underwriters who work from home, SaaS systems such as Guidewire and Salesforce, and numerous APIs, all of which can access the same sensitive customer information. And it is this sensitive customer information that is viewed as a gold mine for attackers.
Security strategies often fail to recognize that this environment breaks many of the assumptions that network security was built on, while also expanding the attack surface. As a result, insurance networks face constant risk from ransomware, phishing campaigns, and malware and data-exfiltration tools designed to exploit weak points across the environment.
Insurance Operations’ Hidden Exposure
Legacy access approaches, including traditional VPNs and PoP-based SASE architectures, remain common in the insurance industry. Traditional VPNs route remote traffic through an organization’s VPN gateway, while PoP-based SASE services redirect traffic to a provider-operated cloud inspection point. Both approaches can centralize enforcement. Depending on configuration, split tunneling, unstable mobile connectivity, and direct-to-SaaS traffic, however, some activity may bypass the intended inspection path.
This approach creates security blind spots where controls are applied inconsistently or only after traffic has already moved beyond the point of enforcement. These gaps can result from architectural limitations, configuration choices, and access models that were not designed for today’s highly distributed, mobile insurance workflows.
These blind spots are often where today’s insurance breaches begin. Attackers can exploit these moments when access paths fall outside centralized control, or leverage phishing and credential-based attacks against claims processors, adjusters, or partners. Once an account or device is compromised, attackers may move laterally within connected networks or pivot across SaaS platforms and cloud applications using stolen credentials, sessions, or tokens – activity that legacy, perimeter-centric security models may not continuously evaluate.
Some SASE architectures amplify this challenge. When traffic must be redirected through a centralized inspection path, added distance, latency, or connectivity fluctuations can affect the user experience. Over time, this creates pressure on the architecture itself, where security and performance are in opposition rather than working together. Any period when traffic operates outside consistent enforcement increases exposure and compounds risk.
This growing gap between where work happens and where security is enforced has become a significant concern for the insurance sector and other regulated industries with highly distributed workforces. As operations continue to expand across homes, branch offices, disaster sites, and partner environments, maintaining continuous, always-on security has become not just a technical requirement, but a business imperative.
Compliance Increases Risk for Insurance Companies
Like other regulated sectors, the insurance industry faces not only financial and operational losses when a breach occurs, but also regulatory consequences. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and state laws based on the NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law require covered organizations to safeguard customer information, maintain appropriate security programs, and meet applicable investigation and reporting obligations.
Legacy security falls short because policies may be enforced sporadically, audit trails break down the moment traffic leaves the expected path, and logs are fragmented across numerous tools. This creates a compounding operational and compliance burden that can become unmanageable. For lean mid-market insurance IT teams managing security, compliance, and operations, producing detailed, defensible compliance evidence can become difficult and resource-intensive.
VPNs Are No Longer the Answer
VPNs were not designed to address today's highly distributed, always-on insurance workflows. When a field adjuster connects from a disaster zone, VPN traffic is routed through a remote centralized access path, which can introduce latency and create additional points of failure. In split-tunnel or inconsistently configured environments, browser, SaaS, and API traffic may bypass the centralized inspection path, reducing security visibility and potentially putting sensitive information at risk. As a result, security teams lose continuous visibility, consistent policy enforcement, and continuing verification of user and device trust.
Traditional VPNs typically authenticate users when the connection is established and may not continuously reassess identity, device posture, or risk throughout the session unless paired with additional security controls. This can leave compromised credentials or devices trusted for longer than they should be, increasing the potential impact of phishing, credential theft, and ransomware.
Three Elements to a Secure Insurance Model
To protect insurance organizations today, the security model must have three things.
First, Zero Trust must be enforced at the point of access. A claims system, underwriting portal, or network must be reachable only after the user, device, and policy all pass continuous verification, rather than granting trust based primarily on the user’s network location.
Second, threat inspection must happen at the source, so malicious activity can be detected and blocked before it reaches a cloud gateway or PoP.
Finally, compliance controls must be uniform. Logging, data protection, and access control cannot depend on whether a user remembered to connect to a VPN.
New Approaches for the Insurance Industry
A distributed, endpoint-first Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model addresses this problem differently. Instead of requiring all security traffic to be redirected through vendor-operated PoPs, it can deploy a single-app, single-stack enforcement engine directly on the endpoint, at the network edge, or within the cloud. This allows inspection, Zero Trust enforcement, and threat prevention to occur as close to the traffic source as possible.
For insurance teams, this is a game changer. If a field adjuster clicks a phishing link, traffic can be inspected and blocked on the device before it even gets to the Internet. When a broker accesses Guidewire or Salesforce, policies can be applied at the point of connection to support least-privilege access without forcing traffic through a distant gateway. And when auditors visit, the unified stack has consistent logs and policy records across every user, device, and location, making compliance evidence easier to retrieve and provide.
Why This Matters for Insurance
Insurance is under some of the most demanding forces in any industry. Agents, adjusters, and internal staff all need access to sensitive systems, while companies must enforce data protection, audit rules, and least-privilege access to comply with GLBA and NAIC rules.
New endpoint-first SASE models align with how insurance actually works. For example:
- Agents can securely access claims and underwriting apps without relying on VPNs.
- Adjusters can be granted time-limited access through ZTNA.
- Salesforce and Guidewire access can be protected through integrated CASB and secure Web controls.
- Customer information can be better protected through built-in DLP and continuous inspection.
- Remote teams and disaster-response teams stay protected without the need for additional hardware.
Next-generation SASE can be delivered through one unified stack, deployed in minutes, and managed through a single console, exactly what lean insurance IT teams need.
Next Steps in Insurance
Ransomware and regulatory pressures are only getting tougher. Remote work is here to stay and expanding. Cloud and SaaS adoption is accelerating. Insurance organizations that rely on authenticate-once access models rather than continuous verification may be unknowingly increasing their risk of data exposure.
Those that move to an always-on, Zero Trust model delivered in new SASE approaches will be able to protect employees, data, and systems wherever work happens, without the need to trade robust security for performance.
That shift is more than just following technology trends. It strengthens resilience and the ability to thrive in a world where one click can trigger a regulatory, financial, and reputational crisis.
