Today's independent insurance agents must be well-versed in andcompliant with roughly a dozen federal and state cyber securityregulations that govern the handling of sensitive policyholderinformation, according to a new resource from the Agents Council for Technology (ACT).

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ACT is a program under the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America.It aims to bring together volunteer work groups to addressissues such as cybersecurity, customer experience and futuretrends.

To that end, ACT just published a free, downloadable regulatorychecklist of sorts to help independent insurance agencies andagents get in front of compliance and security measures when itcomes to facing down cyber threats and initiating cyber insurancepolicies.

"Having to communicate to customers that their privateinformation has been breached can cripple a business and incurthousands of dollars of costs and penalties," said ACT ExecutiveDirector Ron Berg. "With such high stakes in mind, the ACT SecurityIssues Work Group has complied this resource for Big 'I'members."

Regulatory checklist

The Agency Cyber Guide 1.0 also includes individualregulatory resources, such as an updated Agency CybersecurityPolicy template.

The Cyber Guide is meant to be an organic resource that'supdated periodically as new cybersecurity laws and cyber threatscome into play. Making this Guide available to independent agenciesfor free supports the ACT's goal of fostering consistent,innovative workflows throughout the insurance industry.

Agents looking to become more involved with the ACT and itscybersecurity work may want to attend the 2017 ACT Meeting happening Sept. 7-8 at theHyatt Regency Chicago, in conjunction with the 2017 Big"I" Fall Leadership Conference.

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