FBD Insurance Achieves Data Visibility with Forcepoint

Insurance providers offer peace of mind in an unpredictable world, the assurance that someone will come to your aid when disaster strikes. But where do these insurance companies turn for protection in an increasingly unpredictable and sophisticated cyber threat landscape?

As potential holders of multiple types of sensitive information – Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Personal Health Information (PHI) and Payment Card Information (PCI) – insurance providers frequently become targets for ransomware and other types of cyberattacks. To keep operations running smoothly and prevent reputational harm, companies need to understand what data they hold and employ the right solutions to protect it.

FBD Insurance is one provider that relies on Forcepoint Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and Data Detection and Response (DDR) to keep control over sensitive information. By supplying superior visibility and control over data throughout the organization, Forcepoint helps FBD Insurance eliminate risk and respond effectively to threats. 

FBD Insurance has grown over more than 50 years from a specialized service for farmers to a leading general insurer for customers across Ireland. Chief Technology and Operations Officer Enda Kyne notes that the threats they face have become more sophisticated over time, and the necessity of adopting multiple security solutions has caused implementation headaches.

Forcepoint DSPM and DDR, which focus on protecting data-at-rest and data-in-use respectively, offer complementary protection that shines a light on sensitive data throughout the organization and facilitates rapid remediation and threat response. 

Enda Kyne, Chief Technology & Operations Officer for FBD Insurance said this:

Forcepoint DSPM and DDR tools have been very much embraced by our IT security team and our data protection officer team because they're easy to use, they're modern and they're actually fit for purpose. 

The starting point is to sift through all the data scattered throughout the organization, from on-premises repositories to cloud storage to endpoints, to find specific types of regulated information. This allows security teams to reduce risk by ensuring that sensitive data is stored in the right places and by addressing data duplication and over-permissioned files.

Forcepoint DSPM can rapidly and accurately scan petabytes of data, classifying what it finds and providing data visibility by means of a unified interface. Admins can see what all the sensitive data in the organization is and where it resides, with the ability to perform remediation and reporting activities from within the same solution. 

The classification engine is very accurate, so it's allowed us really to pinpoint what is the critical data we must… lock down, but also the team can utilize the solution to provide transparent reports for regulators who are reviewing what we do.  

Forcepoint DSPM and DDR integrate with each other and with other Forcepoint solutions. They are also designed for maximum interoperability with leading third-party solutions, helping to ensure that they fit seamlessly into organizations’ end-to-end security operations. 

The taxonomy we use in the tools is consistent with what we use in terms of perimeter security and what we use in Zero Trust. 

So, they're able to speak the same language across the teams and that’s made it easy for leadership colleagues, board committees and board to penetrate what we're doing in this area and to understand we're actually doing a good job.  

Groundbreaking data security powered by AI Mesh

Insurance providers like FBD deal with different types of sensitive information in different contexts, and they have to be on the lookout for critical data hiding in unexpected and unprotected places. Their ability to maintain a strong security posture therefore rests on the strength of their classification activities. As Forcepoint Chief Data Strategy Officer Ronan Murphy explains, FBD Insurance’s secret weapon is the Forcepoint AI Mesh engine, which offers stunning speed and accuracy while fine-tuning classification over time to fit each company’s unique data holdings. 

Here's what Ronan had to say about AI Mesh:

Forcepoint's AI Mesh is really world-class cutting-edge technology that helps the world's most sophisticated organizations to solve some really complex problems with their data. 

The AI Mesh is a low-compute, highly functional, very intelligent set of Small Language Models to help them discover their data, contextualize their data, classify their data and then risk-assess their data.  

By adopting Forcepoint DSPM and DDR, FBD Insurance has laid the foundation to understand and defend their entire store of sensitive data. Forcepoint solutions extend protection to data wherever it resides and wherever employees access it, bringing visibility and control to complex operating environments at any scale.

Forcepoint AI allows organizations to not only control the view of their data from a GRC perspective, but also the ability to protect that data at scale on the endpoint, across their network, and also in any of the hyperscaler clouds.  

Finding all of their sensitive data, ensuring it is stored securely and responding rapidly to incidents are all ways that FBD Insurance uses Forcepoint products to defend critical business operations. We’re proud to be able to deliver the same peace of mind to FBD Insurance that they have provided to customers for decades. Read their full customer story here. 

Ready to start finding and fixing data risks throughout your organization? Sign up now for a free Data Risk Assessment to quickly find how exposed your sensitive data is.