Why the right cyber partnerships matter

October marks Cybersecurity Awareness Month—a timely opportunity for businesses to pause, reassess, and strengthen how they approach cyber risk. The digital landscape is evolving quickly, and organizations that prepare today will be better positioned to withstand tomorrow’s challenges.

The scope of cyber risk continues to expand, shaping how businesses prepare and respond. Recent benchmarks illustrate both the scale of the challenge and the urgency of building resilience.

By the numbers:

• $23.84 trillion – projected annual global cost of cybercrime by 2027, up from $8.4 trillion in 2022
• $10.22 million – average cost of a U.S. data breach in 2025, the highest on record
• $51 billion – exposed global losses tied to business email compromise (BEC) schemes since 2013
• 15.6% – increase of average payout and incident cost from 2023 to 2024

These numbers underscore a reality every business faces today: cyber risk has evolved from a niche IT concern to a board-level responsibility with direct implications for financial performance, regulatory standing, and long-term reputation.

The evolving cyber risk landscape

Cyber threats are no longer confined to opportunistic phishing emails or one-off ransomware attacks. Today’s attackers are coordinated, persistent, and capable of exploiting vulnerabilities in your ecosystem—whether it’s an untrained employee, an overlooked vendor, or an outdated system.

The consequences often extend well beyond downtime. A single incident can trigger regulatory fines, shareholder scrutiny, reputational harm, or cascading third-party disruption. As digital ecosystems expand, so does the complexity of protecting them.

Navigate cyber risk as a team

Organizations that successfully build cyber resilience share a common thread: they don’t operate in isolation.

• Internally, they invest in people and governance, empowering employees through training, clear policies, and incident readiness.
• Externally, they manage vendor relationships with rigor, ensuring supply chain resilience.
• Reputationally, they sustain stakeholder trust through transparent governance, regulatory alignment, and consistent communication.
• Strategically, they rely on trusted advisors—insurance brokers, insurers, and incident response partners—to simplify complexity, validate readiness, and deliver expertise when it matters most.

This integrated approach is what separates companies that merely respond to incidents from those that anticipate, withstand, and recover with credibility.

Build resilience through partnerships

In today’s environment, partnerships extend the reach of lean internal teams and help meet rising expectations from insurers, regulators, and boards.

• Insurance advisors translate insurer requirements into actionable steps, advocate for stronger terms, and connect businesses with resources that reinforce readiness.
• Insurance company partners can provide more than financial resources to cover claims, offering access to training platforms, assessment tools, and vetted vendors that strengthen security before an incident occurs.
• Incident response firms bring technical, forensic, and communications expertise that help preserve trust in the most critical hours after a breach.

Together, these partnerships form the foundation of a more resilient cyber program, one that reduces exposure, improves insurability, and protects reputation under pressure.

Partnerships for protection

This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re spotlighting several best practices every business should adopt to strengthen cyber readiness. From empowering your workforce to managing vendor risk, our latest insights will help you:

• Benchmark your current practices against insurer and regulatory expectations
• Identify practical steps to close readiness gaps
• Build stronger partnerships to prepare for, withstand, and recover from cyber incidents

Cybersecurity may be complex, but resilience is achievable with the right strategy and the right partners. Join the conversation this Cybersecurity Awareness Month as we share checklists, insights, and partner perspectives to help you strengthen readiness across your workforce, vendor ecosystem, and stakeholder relationships.