They’re Not Hacking In — They’re Logging In: How Identity Attacks Impact Cyber Insurance

Read full article from Veza here: https://veza.com/blog/cyber-insurance-identity-security/?utm_source=nhimg

In today’s threat landscape, attackers no longer need to “hack” their way in — they simply log in. Modern breaches exploit identity weaknesses rather than traditional perimeter defenses. According to Allianz Commercial’s Cybersecurity Resilience 2025 report, ransomware now drives over half of large insurance claims, while 79% of attacks are malware-free, relying instead on stolen or misused credentials. This marks a critical shift: your identity security posture now directly impacts your cyber insurability.

Identity Is the New Attack Surface

For decades, organizations have focused on building strong perimeters, layering endpoint protection, and deploying firewalls. But as hybrid work, SaaS sprawl, and machine identities multiply, the perimeter has dissolved. Attackers now target what’s inside — credentials, tokens, service accounts, and over-permissioned roles. Once they gain access, they escalate privileges and move laterally, often unnoticed. In this new reality, access intelligence, not infrastructure hardening, determines resilience and insurance readiness.

From Authentication to Authorization: The Critical Shift

Authentication verifies who you are; authorization defines what you can do. Most organizations have matured their authentication stack — MFA, conditional access, and phishing-resistant controls are now standard. Yet, authorization remains the weakest link. Over-entitled users, unmonitored service accounts, and excessive API permissions create blind spots ripe for abuse.

Shifting to authorization-focused security means understanding and controlling every permission across your identity landscape — human and non-human — and proving to insurers that your controls can withstand credential-based threats.

The Four Authorization Blind Spots That Affect Insurability

Cyber insurers and underwriters increasingly assess how well organizations govern access. Their evaluations focus on four critical risk domains that shape coverage and premiums:

1. Privileged Access and Dormant Accounts - Having a PAM solution isn’t enough. Underwriters expect evidence of continuous privilege discovery, active removal of unused permissions, and enforcement of least privilege across all environments.

2. Non-Human Identities (NHIs)
   Machine and service accounts are often the most neglected identities. Insurers now expect complete visibility into NHIs, including shadow and AI-related identities, with proof of human ownership, lifecycle governance, and ongoing monitoring.

3. Third-Party and Supply Chain Access
   Vendor and contractor access introduces indirect risk. Organizations must show clear, auditable processes for onboarding, auditing, and restricting third-party access — including automated monitoring of external identity behavior.

4. Toxic Combinations and Separation of Duties (SoD)
   The most overlooked risks come from overlapping entitlements. Underwriters want to see active detection of SoD violations and toxic access combinations that could enable fraud or data misuse, backed by a demonstrable policy enforcement trail.

How Veza Strengthens Identity Assurance and Insurability

To maintain insurability, organizations must demonstrate mature, data-driven identity governance. Veza enables this through authorization intelligence that unifies visibility and control across users, applications, cloud platforms, and data systems.

• Unified Access Mapping: The Veza Access Graph continuously correlates authorization metadata from over 300 enterprise systems to visualize who can take what action on which data — eliminating guesswork from risk assessments.
• Proactive Risk Detection: With over 2,000 pre-built queries, Veza instantly identifies dormant permissions, privileged accounts, and policy violations to drive remediation before insurers even ask.
• Least Privilege at Scale: Continuous monitoring and right-sizing of permissions ensures adherence to the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) across both human and non-human identities.
• Quantifiable Identity Risk Scoring: Veza’s real-time risk engine provides measurable proof of identity control maturity, giving CISOs the hard data insurers require to validate coverage and justify premium reductions.

Proving Identity Control to Insurers

Cyber insurers no longer accept checklists or self-reported claims — they demand verifiable proof. Veza empowers organizations to move from reactive questionnaire responses to proactive, data-backed assurance. With continuous identity visibility, measurable control maturity, and evidence-based reporting, security leaders can demonstrate that their identity environment is secure, auditable, and insurable.

In a landscape where “they’re not hacking in, they’re logging in,” proving authorization control is no longer optional — it’s the foundation of both cyber resilience and financial protection.